avalonstar:distortion

I’m sitting near B10 in Seattle/Tacoma International, starting my recovery from one hell of a trip. If you don’t follow my pseudo-miniblog, you’ll probably be wondering how we popped up in King County. For the last 72 hours, Jen and I have been on a non-stop, point-to-point, apartment search. Yes, that means that Team Revyver is moving to the Emerald City.

The prospect of moving to the Seattle Area has been floating for a few months. Before then, Seattle had never crossed my mind. However, ever since I had a particular conversation with Mr. Newsvine ...

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Today Jen and I had the chance to visit the Sony Metreon in San Francisco for a Square-Enix event that was announced a few weeks ago, celebrating 20 years since the release of the first Final Fantasy for the NES. It turned out to be more of an event to get your money than an event to celebrate the legacy of Final Fantasy, but as blind fans, we had to at least see what the “crystal hooha” was all about. Below is a retelling of today’s story. (I would have had this up earlier, but my battery died ...

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I rearranged my desk tonight—and actually—it’s not something I do rarely.

Whenever I find myself cleaning, I start to rearrange things. I seem to do that to relieve stress. The cleaning, not the rearranging. If say, Django’s kicking my ass, I’ll go ahead and do the dishes and wipe down the counter, maybe even vacuum to get the nerves down. It’s relieving in an odd way. Well, I have a hard time not thinking about things, especially if said thing is troubling me. Things like, the rent being due, but not having any ...

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The subject of relevance has been floating in my mind for the past few weeks, off and on. Why? I’m not too sure, other than to attribute the thoughts to the overall reasoning for wanting to wipe this slate clean in the first place. As everybody who blogs knows, the blog is based on a descending chronological structure. New posts come in, old posts go down and fall into the back of the blog’s memory. Archives allow you to access the past, to do anything from compare the difference in writing styles to find that article on ...

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Work is love made visible. And if you can’t work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of the people who work with joy.

~ Kahlil Gibran

It’s funny sometimes. I look back at my education, and I wonder if spending four years in college studying entrepreneurship was the right thing to do. Do I regret it? Nah. But I would certainly say at this stage that I’m not a normal entrepreneur, if you’d call me that ...

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At the moment I’m in the middle of the first phase of my road trip to Austin; spending some time with my sister who’s on spring break (yes, I know February just ended) and my parents. So I’ve had a chance to take a breather and prepare for the 1,300 mile trip ahead of me. It’s surprising just how unproductive one can be when sitting on a comfortable couch. Since my mind will be occupied with enough serious subjects by the time I get there, I wanted to just sit back, relax and write ...

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Wednesday the 21st marked my fourth year with Jenni. Four years of being together, a little over than three living together—we’re practically married except for the church and the cake parts. So, to celebrate we took a trip to Uno’s Chicago Grill in Antioch (which happens to be the only Uno’s in the Bay Area because the other two were closed down due to the owner not paying his taxes for 15 years). I first took her to dinner there when she visited me in April of 2003, so it seemed appropriate. That and we ...

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8:39 PM

I tried mobile blogging this, but unfortunately my lovely Samsung A900 doesn’t like blogging. I’m unfortunately stuck in Corpus Christi at the moment, on what was supposed to be an hour trip to Houston. From the looks of it, we weren’t able to get to Houston because of a raging storm. Actually, the passenger next to me lives 5 miles from George Bush International, and his wife had a different opinion on the weather, or lack of opinion when he called her. However, I know I did see something out my window - well ...

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So my Dad and I were talking at WalMart the other night:

Dad: So how do you like your new job? Me: It’s great Dad, it’s really fun. Dad: So what does your company do again?

* Insert semi-blank look.

Me: You know that thing that Steffi uses called LiveJournal? Dad: Yeah. Me: Well, the company makes a competitive product, which is WordPress.

* Insert nervous smile.

Dad: Oh okay.

Ever experience this? Well, I’m sure in one way or another, a family member (whom isn’t very fluent in our industry) has asked you the question of ...

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Since Friday, June 2nd, I’ve been working on an awesome project with the great team at Flock. What started as a trip to go visit my good friend Will Pate turned into the opportunity of a lifetime. I had the chance to take a creative role in how Flock, who are trying to revolutionize the way youth browse the web, presented themselves. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity. However, it wasn’t all sweet. By taking the project of providing them with an effective redesign to accompany their new beta product, I threw a gigantic rock ...

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I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time, and it’s sort of a weird situation that’s causing me to write this.

Let me start off by saying that one of my good friends from Rhode Island was recently “dooced” (if I may use the word), before she even began her summer internship. I’m left with this feeling of anger after reading her thoughts about it, but yet, it’s an o-so-familiar story that so many people have been through. We’ve been told about this over and over again to not post personal ...

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Although I was really trying to keep myself from doing meme’s, the one that Jeff Croft (but apparently Dan Rubin beat him to it) tagged me with provided me with a bit of a challenge. For one, it has been a while since I’ve thought so far back, and two, doing so would offer me some time to reminisce. However, unlike Jeff’s answers, I’ll be presenting mine backwards, as I’m sure you’d like to discover more about the 13-year-old Bryan than the 22-year-old Bryan.

Where was I ten years ago?

Ten years ago ...

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As sort of a sequel to my “Rules for Instant Messaging” comes the next most likely candidate, commenting. It’s interesting because the comment in our world is like gold in any other. A person’s opinion is invaluable, but as with gold, there are some that are the genuine artifact and others that are as valuable as pyrite.

But if I did have to make only one rule for commenting, it’d be this. (And I have Mr. Snook here to agree with me.)

1. Commenting’s fun! If you’re not doing it yet, do it already! Contribute ...

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It’s about 7:30 PM, and I can finally say that I feel relaxed for the first time today, first time this week for that matter. I have the windows open and can hear the cars fly by. It’s a feeling I don’t get too often while I’m alone.

Usually my relaxing moments come when Jen’s with me and we’re watching an episode of Lost or playing a board game. But since she’s at school for another two hours, I can only fend for myself.

I had a hard time working today ...

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For years I’ve kept my screen name in the open as I’ve been willing to help people when they were in need of some attentionadvice. But years of instant messaging can take a toll as such, I’ve developed a few pet peeves. So to warn you before you incur the wrath of: o_O, here are a few “rules” to keep in mind. Granted, rules are meant to be broken and I find myself breaking some myself at times. But calling them guidelines just doesn’t do them enough justice.

• Never, ever, start a conversation with ...

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Time: 11:10 PM Just got to Best Buy, looks like 30 people beat us here, which isn’t that bad considering the pictures I had seen earlier on Kotaku. So Jen and I brought my Powerbooks, videos, blankets and pillows. I thought it was a little nuts bringing extra stuff. Obviously, I’m not an experienced “wait outside for shit the day it comes out” person. There were people complete with food, sleeping bags, lounge chairs, etc. Looks like the first people got here about 3 hours ago, and some of them definitely don’t look like gamers ...

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I don’t know what it is about me and Benzinger but it seems like we get into the weirdest conversations about the “good ‘ol days.” Then again, I like to reminisce about those days and see how far I’ve come. That whole “knowing your past before creating your future,” kind of thing. So this was the first time this happened:

Brian: do you remember anything resembling… xist, xotech, xpired, xposure, xposed, etc back in the day? Me: Um… Brian: like.. a few years back, maybe 4 or 5. Brian: well, my brother said he remembers you from ...

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Today I ate a scrumptious buffet lunch at this place where my family used to go all the time, then got tired of. Well, the food wasn’t that great. But I got the best fortune cookie, an empty bag that was supposed to contain a fortune cookie. No, this is not a joke, that bag isn’t open and all the air is still inside it. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when I got it, since everybody else grabbed for the cookies and I was left with the bag. That’s what I get for ...

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