by Matt | Jun 15, 2008 | Personal
Having now seen both Iron Man and The Hulk this summer, I find myself missing comic books as a whole. A long time ago I had stopped reading them altogether, mostly for budget reasons and the lack of a good comic book store nearby. I had skipped months at a time and, like all serial story arches be it movie, TV or literature, once you fall behind, catching up is nearly impossible. It’s the same reason I don’t watch Lost or Heroes. So I gave the habit up.
Now, after seeing those two, I find myself wondering what exactly happened to the stories and characters I loved as a kid and a teenager.
I was also confused as hell when (spoiler) at the end of Iron Man, Nick Fury was black and (spoiler again) at the end of The Hulk, Tony Stark pops in and wants to start a super team.
Apparently I had missed the whole “Marvel Ultimates” universe and it’s becoming blatantly obvious the more I read about the comics in that series, that this is the direction Marvel is taking and drawing from for their movies. It’s also pretty obvious that we can expect either a Capt. America movie in the very near future or they’ll go all out and to an “Ultimates” movie of some sort. Apparently it’s not cool to call them “The Avengers” any more either. Found that out the hard way.
So, long story short, I feel like if this is where all the new comic book movies are coming from, I may as well catch myself up. I started digging around on “Things from another world” or TFAW.com, which I remembered being a website Nagle had ordered comics from back in college, and quickly realized that in a few short years I had not missed just a mini-series of a title or two but that Marvel created and entire other universe and filled it with dozens of titles. I don’t know where to being. I think I might pick up the TPBs of “The Ultimates” and “Ultimate X-men”, at least the first ones.
From the sounds of it, the entire universe revolves around S.H.I.E.L.D and the super-solider program. It’s the basis for nearly everything in that universe, minus the mutants of course, but only kinda.
This brings me to my next point in that TFAW is having 50% off on their “Nick and Dent” TPBs. I figure, for $30 I can catch up on years of comics. Just thought I’d pass that little tid bit along in case anyone else is needing to catch up too.
So, has anyone read any of this stuff? Is it worth trying to catch up?
by Matt | Jun 13, 2008 | Friends and Family, Personal
I typically don’t see the point in “general life” updates, but it’s been a while, so maybe it’s needed. I usually think that if I don’t have an opinion about something, that’s it’s pointless to talk about simply for the sake of posting something. No ones cares that I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today. That’s all I’m trying to say.
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by Matt | May 19, 2008 | Personal
It’s been a week since I started and I’m now settling in at my new job. The first week was a little on the crazy side, but pretty positive. I had a weeks worth of training videos, procedure manuals, documents to sign, all that good stuff. I had to get keys, key cards, IDs, email accounts, phone extensions and start the process on even more stuff that I’ve yet to get (ie: it’s on order or isn’t set up yet).
I was right in my guess that I’ll be on a Mac. I’m working off a MacBook Pro at the moment and my giant Mac Pro (with maxed out specs) will be here next week. The cinema display is just sitting here waiting to be used to it’s full potential.
We’re a separate entity inside of the company, complete with our own budget for things like hardware, so they seem to always get the nicest toys. I’ve even been asked to “make a list” of camera equipment I might want or need for any future shoots. It’s like Christmas shopping came early this year.
The job itself is good. I’m really enjoying it. There’s a great bunch of people I’m working with. There’s a graphic designer, a videographer and designer/jack of all trades guy who’s my direct boss. I think with my photo skills and a healthy dose of Photoshop mastery and web design background I’ll be a good addition to the team.
The best part is, I can take time off whenever I want, take real vacations, and enjoy myself. For the past five years I’ve taken a grand total of two, less than 5 day, vacations. I don’t know if my former employer realizes how easy he got off because we were always too busy for me to be able to take vacations. Looking back, it was incredibly unfair that I had to cut vacations short or not take them at all because of projects at work. Now, with a more corporate structured atmosphere, it’ll make having a normal life much more easy.
I’m really happy at the moment, and very glad I made this change. I think it’ll be a good move for me on all levels. I hope everything is going well with you guys, I feel like I haven’t talked to anyone in forever. It’s been a solid month of craziness down here.
by Matt | May 5, 2008 | Personal
I’ve had a wide variety of cars in my life. I’ve driven my parents cars, an old junky pickup truck, an old Oldsmobile with no AC, a nice little Mazda that was in a huge wreck. All of those cars were either free or under $500. My current car is the first “new car” that I’ve purchased solely on my own dime and that I’ve now successfully paid off. The car is mine, in total, and I’m fairly proud of that.
That’s why it hurt so much to bring it in for brake work today. Since it was a new car, I’ve yet to put any major maintenance into it. Normally it’s just $25 for an oil change, or $8 for a headlight, or something little like that.
Today I had to drop $350 for a complete brake job.
I’ve ridden that car pretty hard and recently had a series of brake-slamming incidents that lead to the brake light being on and a faint scratching/whirring sound every time I slowed down. Drivers here in Texas refuse to use any sort of turn signal and have a habit of turning into places at the last second or even from the wrong lane. I’ve had to avoid dozens of collisions since I’ve been here. I blame the drivers from Mexico. If you think that’s somehow racist, I assure you it’s not. It’s simply an observation that the driving laws, or lack there of, south of the boarder and many of that regions residents coming here to visit/work/live, etc leads to poor driving habits by a large portion of the population. They drive the same on small dirt roads in the country as they do on our freeways. I’m sorry if they can’t handle going faster than 35mph on the correct side of the road.
I can’t be mad at them any more. There’s far too many of them and they simply suck at driving. There’s not really any nice way to say it.
So, I’ve had a few close calls and had to put a bit of extra pressure on my poor brakes.
All four pads and shoes needed replacing, and all four routers got machined. They also bleed and refiled the brakes lines and rotated the cylinders. They were also concerned with one of the rear calipers but it turned out to just be stubborn and not stuck or broken. That cost me $350 and half the day.
I don’t really mind, it’s not like brakes are something you can live without. They’re kind of an integral part of the car. Being able to stop is fairly important and I’d rather be safe than rear end someone because my brakes gave out.
I think after my first paycheck at the new job I’ll put a set of new tires on as well. Other than that, the car has been relatively maintenance free so far. I can definitely deal with oil changes and tire rotations if this baby will go 200,000. We just got 150,000 out of Lauren’s car without any major maintenance. At that point, the cars reliability has more than paid for itself.
by Matt | Apr 25, 2008 | Personal, Work
Now that all the papers have been signed, all the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted, and all the announcements and notices given, it’s probably safe to tell you guys. As of May 12th, I’ll be employed at a large (if not the largest) NASA contractor as an art director/graphic designer in their internal art department.
It was an opportunity that kind of came out of left field and that I wasn’t really expecting at the time. I had no intentions of leaving my current job but the chance to work for NASA was simply too good to resist.
Leaving will actually be very hard. This job has been very good to me and I valued highly the advise and wisdom of my boss. I’ve grown a lot here and I’m sad to leave but I’m looking forward to new challenges in a more “corporate” environment.
Compensation didn’t play a large part in my decision but from a benefit stand point, I’m very happy. I’ve never had things like dental coverage or a 401k before.
My new job will mostly involve working on job proposals, brochures, internal graphics, photos, posters, trade publications, etc. I’ll be doing quite a bit of Photoshop/Illustrator work as well as redesigning their intranet site.
I’m also excited that the job might involve a little bit of travel. They need quite a lot of photos and stock material for the brochures and and proposals and they want to start doing that internally as well. But that’s further down the road. For now I just need to brush up on my Illustrator skills, since that’s where it sounds like I’ll be starting.
I also get to play with a wide variety of new fangled toys. My work station will most likely be a quad-core Apple with 16G of ram and a cinema display. There’s also talk of getting a laptop, most likely a powerbook. I don’t really know how to feel about that. There certainly isn’t anything wrong with any of that, and the cinema display will surely ease the pain, but being thrown into Apple-land full force from what currently is a 100% PC world will take some adjusting.
I’m excited. This is a big change for me and I think it’ll be a good one. I can finally start saving some money for a house. I can pay off those student loans, start a retirement fund and all those things that normal grown-ups do.
These next two weeks will be long ones. Not from the “it’ll be uncomfortable because I’m leaving” standpoint, but because we have a lot of work to do before I leave. I didn’t want to leave my boss in the lurch, so I have a lot of project and loose ends to tie up before I go.
Anyways, just wanted to share the good news with everyone.
Matt out
by Matt | Apr 14, 2008 | Personal
If I’m delayed in posting, often it’s only for the best of reasons. Over the past two weeks, my father in law has been hospitalized with severe intestinal problems, surgery and compications arising from both. He had surgery two weeks ago and just got out of the ICU a day or two ago. There were a lot of post-surgery problems and they were complicated further by bad anesthesia. He’s doing better now, but he’ll be in the hospital recovering for quite a while. He’s not expected to leave the hospital for at least another few weeks, and then a 6+ week recovery at home. So, we’ve been at the hospital pretty much non-stop for two weeks now. We’ve been back to the apartment only to sleep. I’m borrowing a laptop for the time being so I can do little updates like these and try and stay occupied. So, my appologies on in-frequency, but like I said, it’s all for a reason.
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