mkbrister

I'm writing this partly at Danny's request. We wanted to wait to make sure as many family members as possible found out directly before coming across this here.

Danny's Grandmother passed away Wed night. She had fallen a couple of times recently followed by a stroke about a week ago. Since then, she's been under nearly constant attendance by nurses and family members including Danny for much of the last 2 days. I felt bad knowing I was having a good time at IAAPA while he was dealing with this but I don't think any of us realized how quickly things would progress.

The service in Las Vegas is Friday followed by another one and the burial in St. George, Utah on Monday. Danny and I have both managed to get last minute time off from work to attend both. Danny had already asked for a month off from his PT weekend job to continue caring for her.

Please feel free to pass on your thoughts by electronic means we're asking that no one call Danny right now. I can pass on messages as well.

Thanks,
Mike & Danny

I am a very happy camper. Yesterday and today, I attended the yearly convention of the International Association or Amusement Parks and Attractions. Anyone who has known me for longer than a couple of minutes knows that I'm fascinated with the theme park industry and its various extensions. This convention is my Mecca. I've been to it twice before in 1997 and for part of a day back when I worked for Disney. This visit was overdue.

What made this time so unique was that I explored the convention with some of my favorite like-minded folk. The fun actually started after work Monday night when I met up with my friends (and former WDW cohorts), Kristin and Greg at the Wynn for "drinks" and pre-IAAPA conversation. We were actually in the Wynn's new extension, Encore. It was nice to see it. Very red in there.

The next day, I briefly caught up with Kristin and Greg again at IAAPA. However, I spent most of the day walking the floor with my friend, Dave (e_ticket ), from Los Angeles. He's a themed attraction designer / writer / creator for a company called Thinkwell and he's a great guide. That first day was a pretty casual walk. There were lots of stories and insider explanations of the various booths and their often bizarre displays. Check out the pictures on my Facebook to see some of it for yourself. Tacky plastic palm trees, creepy dancing costume characters, free food guaranteed to cause a heart attack, lots of weird / very Japanese plush, carnival rides, special effects and animatronics manufacturers, and (my favorite) design firms. I collected lots of company names to send resumes to later. In the last hours, I walked with Kristin and Ray (raythe54 ). We took time to visit out friends and contacts at the Medialon booth as well. The night ended with a nice dinner at Gordon Biersch with Dave and his friend Marty from Disneyland.

The second day, I was part of a larger group that seemed to continually add and lose members. It was mostly Kristin, Dave, Marty, Ray, and myself. We had a much more frantic walk through the place but I got to meet and / or see lots of cool people and things. One of the more unique things we did was sit in on the 1st hour (of 3) of a panel discussion by 5 "Disney Legends" that actually worked directly with Walt: Marty Sklar, Blaine Gibson (who was 91 years old), Bob Gurr, Richard Sherman, and Buzz Price. The stories were fascinating because they were first person accounts of the history of what essentially amounts to the creation of this industry as it is today. At the same time, they were unscripted stories told by old men that sometimes felt like Grandpa's boring old war stories. Gurr and Sherman were the most interesting to me.

Overall the IAAPA experience was wonderful. I certainly didn't see everything due to maintaining my night schedule and showing up at lunch time both days. I had no plan and no goals. It was just random exploration mostly dictated by others. Truth is, I've seen all this stuff before but there is something amazing about being in a huge building full of people who share my interests. That doesn't happen to me very often. There was a touch of economic desperation in the air that mostly became clear when vendors saw the default title of "buyer" on my badge. Thankfully, I put my freelance company name (Logic Box) on there. I'm sure I would have been stopped a lot more if I put Cirque du Soleil. Plus, Dave knows a lot of people in the industry and I think that helped deflect a lot of attention away from me as I explored the booths unnoticed. Sales people make me kind of uncomfortable. It was nice watching him do the interacting while I just absorbed the scene. In fact, this arrangement made for a very unique point of view. I saw the convention through the eyes of a new arrival and a seasoned pro at the same time. For me, it was the best of both worlds.

It was convenient this year since it was in Las Vegas but I really want to try to attend more often in the future. I didn't go very far this time, but it still felt like a great vacation.

<geek><rant>

Dear Evil Geniuses Who Write Serial Protocols,

You suck. Let me clarify. Many of you suck. I find it hard to believe that in this day and age, writing a serial protocol that is simple and straightforward is so hard to do. I'm sure you guys have a grand old time, sitting around in your cubicles or basements laughing about how you've made some poor show control programmer cry. Ha ha, good times. Now knock it off. Let me 'splain...

• First of all, TCP/IP people! Jeez. DB9 cables are the cassette decks of serial cabling. And if you just HAVE to have this cable, stop with the silly custom pin-outs. Seriously, what does that accomplish? Nobody with any sense is going to buy your $10,000 custom cable anyway.
• Can we all just agree that 8 bits, 1 stop bit and no parity or handshaking is the standard? Please? No more goofy 7 or 9 bits. And some of you seriously need to quit with the bit shifting.
• Checksums are annoying! If we must do these, can we just do sums? No more binary AND or OR. No more 2's compliment of something or the other. No more sum of just some bytes but not others. Just because we know how to do binary math doesn't mean we want to just to turn a damn TV on and off.
• Parsing feedback should not require you to be a cryptologist. Fixed length data! Are leading zeros really such a bad thing? This is especially true for those of you that like to jam all your status data into one bible-sized string. Do you know how hard it is to pluck out a piece of information from the middle of a string that's never the same length twice?
• If you are re-branding someone else's gear, have the courtesy to tell us that in the manual. And if your manual is translated from another language, the translator should actually speak both languages. I also want to mention that a full and complete example of your protocol in practical use is 100% more useful than 8 paragraphs of dizzying explanation.
• Infrared. This is a one way form of communication. Therefore, toggle commands totally blow. There's no way to monitor whether it worked or not. I know you need the toggle for the remotes but put the discreet commands in there for the rest of us.
• Legacy support and consistency! Not everything you make needs to have a brand new protocol. Add all the fancy new commands you like but leave the old ones in there. I shouldn't have to reprogram everything just because I upgraded from model A to B. Are you really improving the "turn on" command that much by changing it once a year?
• Stop advertising that your product supports serial control when you're really talking about some proprietary interconnectivity between only your products that will not get released to the public. That deserves prison time in my opinion.

In closing, let me just say 57 68 61 74 20 74 68 65 20 66 75 63 6b 21 3f

Thank you for your time.

</geek></rant>

Back in 2003, I started writing my 2nd book.  The 1st was a sci-fi story that I really want to go back and redo from scratch.  We'll see if I'm that motivated.  Anyway, the 2nd one is called Shen (an ancient Egyptian word) and it is a bit of a sci-fi / fantasy / hard to classify story (a plot summary and sample chapter are at the end of this post).  I've been re-editing it these last few months after not touching it for nearly 3 years.  Yesterday, I finally finished this editing pass.  When I originally wrote it, my concentration was on being descriptive and (unfortunately) artsy fartsy.  In the second major edit pass, I was concerned with avoiding passive voice and obeying every grammar rule in existence.  For some reason, I even applied that to the dialog.  I then put it away for a few years because I got busy.

When I started editing it this time, I didn't remember a lot of the details so I had really fresh eyes.  It was awkward, stiff and confusing as hell... to me.  I decided that in this pass, any sentence that I couldn't read without having to stop and think would be fixed.  I ignored my strange self-imposed rule about bad language and made the characters say what people would really say in horrible situations.  It has lots of bad words in it now but I think they're used appropriately.  This time, I also put as much effort into describing emotion as I did scenes.  As a part of that, I described the primary character's thought process as well.  Finally, I decided that grammar and voice are not something I should concentrate on at all.  I wrote the story in the voice I hear in my head.  I thought that would be more natural and consistent.  Grammar is still in there but I don't think it is a hurdle anymore.  All that to say, I feel much better about it now.  It finally feels like the story I originally intended.

Up next, I need to go back through it again and fix all the little typos and glitches that surely occurred on the last pass.  I also need to make the dialog of the characters a bit more consistent since I sort of found their voices along the way.  Some of them change a bit from chapter to chapter.  My test readers have notes for me as well.  That is super helpful.

As much as I feel "done" now, I know I'm not.  I am looking forward to having this all finished for real soon.  Then maybe it'll be time to go back and finish that 1st book.


( Plot summary and sample )

Telling people your dreams is often creepy.  Since I'm pretty much oblivious to when I'm being creepy, here goes...

Thanks to the magical way my migraine medicine warps my dreams, I've had some pretty odd ones.  They're usually realistic and scary but lately, they've been kind of interesting (to me).  Here are three unique "entertainment venues" I've visited in my sleep lately.  What do the Mad Hatter, Mad Men, and Mad Max have in common?

( Cut for absurdity... )

Sigh.  I know.

<geek>

Here's a little moment from Twitter yesterday that amused me.  Being bored, I posted something silly for my status and got a familiar reply from a stranger.

mbrister: If you ever want to catch me, set a bear trap and bait it with a can of Altoids.

AdmiralAckbar_ @mbrister It's a trap!

Check out his Twitter feed and accompanying weird website.  Oh, and I snatched the cool tattoo picture from JoshHighland.

</geek>

As long as I'm uploading pictures of hands tonight, I thought I'd slip one of my stupid human tricks in. 

My whole life, I've always had an unusual level of flexibility.  I've lost a tiny bit of that with age and weight gain but I still have very loose joints.  As you can see, my fingers can separate and rotate pretty far.  Nearly every joint in my body is hypermobile like this and none of it is painful.  Oddly, I've never been able to do the splits though.  That is painful.

A little over a year ago, an x-ray of my foot revealed what is going on.  The bones of my feet have large gaps in between every one of them.  Today, my Doctor referred me to a Rheumatologist.  The reason for this is that these "abilities" could be signs of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (I can do everything pictured in the linked article).  Best to be sure, especially since several members of my family are like this too.

Anyway, this concludes tonight's freak show.  Be sure to catch the live show next time you're in Vegas.  :-)

Two months ago, I was at work and Danny was home watching the news.  After a particular news story caught his attention, this text message conversation was exchanged between us...

Danny:  Do you want to get "DDP'd"?
Mike:  What is that?
Danny:  Declaration of Domestic Partnership.  SB-283 (PDF).
Mike:  I'd love to.  Yes... I'll marry you.
Danny:  I would like to marry you too.
Mike:  Sweet.  It's a date.

How modern, huh?  We've been planning to do this ever since that day but one thing or another has kept us busy every weekend until today.  While out running various errands, we took our paperwork to the UPS Store (tres romantic) and got it notarized.  It goes in the mail tomorrow and, after a few days, we'll get a certificate officially making us a Domestic Partnership in the State of Nevada.

Gay Marriage (at least by that title) is still illegal here.  The "DP" is not perfect and certainly not equal but we wanted to do it anyway.  On the practical side, it gives us nearly all of the same State-level rights as married straight couples.  Since we're both around the 40 year mark, it seems like having property, inheritance, and hospital visitation rights could be important.

All practical matters aside, it's just nice to able to say that after 12 years, we are finally going to legally be a couple.  We don't need anyone's approval to validate our relationship but it's nice to be recognized.

By the way, I learned that when doing a Google image search for "gay men rings" with the safe search turned off, hands are not the body part you will see.  I opted to take a quick picture of Danny and I with my cellphone instead.  :-)

My friend e_ticket posted a cool little Halloween decoration today featuring the Hitchhiking Ghosts from Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction.  This reminded me of a moment from my childhood that I thought I'd share. 

Most of you who know me also know that I've had a nearly lifelong fascination with theme park design and technology.  That fixation began suddenly when I was (I think) 10 years old.  Up until then, I always said I wanted to grow up to be an Inventor.  Specifically, I wanted to build robots.

So one day when I was 10, I was exploring the attic for lost treasures when I found some old postcards from my parents' previous visit to Disneyland.  Then I flipped to a postcard that looked a lot like this picture.  I made my Mom explain to me what they were.  Translucent robot puppets in a ride that looked like a giant funhouse of special effects.  Something snapped in my head.  From that moment on, there was no way for me to get enough information about Disney.  Suddenly, I wanted to design and build my own parks which eventually turned into a desire to become a Disney Imagineer.

By the time my family made my first trip to Walt Disney World a year later, I had already collected tons of articles and books and photos of the parks.  I already had the maps of the parks memorized and had detailed knowledge of the contents of most attractions (including names of some of the designers).  It was everything I hoped it would be and more.

15 years later, I got to work for both Walt Disney World and Imagineering.  I've taken many side-trips in my career but that goal of being a theme park designer has never changed.  Even my decision to leave Disney was made as a step towards achieving that goal by varying my experience and moving closer to California where most of that work happens.  I'm still working on it.

I've been asked many times throughout the years why I have this apparent obsession.  I don't really know for sure (but it's probably this).  All I know for certain is that moment when it started.  I think it's strange, wonderful, and a bit scary that most of the direction of my life was dictated by a chance encounter with a postcard.

I'm just grateful my parents didn't have pictures of car dealerships in the attic.

A friend posed a question to me today that I've never been asked before.  And I honestly didn't have much of an answer.  It's kind of an odd thing to have a strong opinion on a topic and not really know instinctively why you have it.

The topic of marijuana legalization came up (among plenty of other interesting and thought-provoking topics) and I said that it didn't really bother me when people I know smoke it but I don't personally want to be around it.

"Why?"

( Me thinking of my answer out loud... )

The Journey to Atlantis attraction was installed in Sea World Orlando while I lived in Florida but I never got the opportunity to check it out.  I heard that it had unique ride systems and the reviews were mixed.  However, I never let anybody that had ridden it tell me much.  I honestly wanted it to be a surprise and I've been excited to see it for a long time.

Years later, I live in Vegas but this past week, Danny and I took a trip to Sea World San Diego where I was pleased to discover the ride existed there too.  Finally!  Due various boring logistics, we didn't get to ride it until the very end of the day... twice.  Now I understand the mixed reviews.

This ride has a great deal of potential.  The ride systems are technologically very interesting.  It switches between a traditional water flume ride and a simple roller coaster.  It also has a cool tilting elevator.  Really neat.  I must say that Atlantis is one of my favorite mythological themes and the architecture of the structure is pretty cool.  Finally, as an element that is very unique to Sea World, the attraction has a large, nicely themed aquarium housing Commerson's Dolphins.  These small black and white dolphins are very energetic, interactive, and amusing.  They spend about 50% of their time swimming around upside-down.  They are the best part of the attraction and you don't have to get in line or ride the ride to see them.

However, this attraction is very disappointing in some respects.  It is almost entirely devoid of any recognizable story.  They did put some effort into a storyline in the form of a disembodied female voice that talks to you from great big obvious speakers sitting on the sides of the track.  She says something about talking to dolphins and "redemption for Atlantis".  The implication is that the ride is a series of challenges to survive.  The dolphin element is tied in via some CGI versions of them that appear on a video screen in the elevator.  I think they saved us or something.  My personal opinion is NEVER use a CGI animal when riders have just seen the real thing up close mere minutes before.  Finally, this ride lasts what feels like about 30 seconds.

So close!  Honestly, I think this same ride system (and even the theme) would be best served in an indoor attraction.  Perhaps a dark ride that has a surprising and sudden thrill ride element that you don't see coming.  I'm thinking of something like a Splash Mountain 2.0.  From what I've read, the Orlando version of this ride does have more dark ride-like elements to it but I can't really judge that version yet.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally got to do this.  There were great elements that I enjoyed immensely but as an entire attraction it felt unfinished.  Now they just need to build a Kraken and Manta in San Diego so I can try that out.

Click here for more pictures from our Sea World visit...

"Give me your tramps, your pretentiousness,
Your crowded masses yearning to breathe smoke and cologne,
The wretched skanks of your teeming reality shows.
Send them, the drunk and disorderly to me,
I lift my lamp beside the velvet rope!"

OH MY GOD... I am so tired of the modern Vegas tourist.  Every night, I pass throngs of pathetic 20-somethings (and 40-somethings squeezed into 20-something outfits) jockeying for the best position around the nightclub velvet ropes.  Ladies only lines, VIP lines, lines forming beside the lines for the really important people who "know a guy".  It's a great big cloud of smoke and pretension, mini-dresses and regret, untucked 'going out' shirts and cologne, alcohol and low self-esteem.  So many of these people flock here to stand at the ropes and be rejected or allowed in to claim the hollow prize of acceptance from strangers that forgot your name before you finished saying it.

Have I mentioned that I hate the overblown club scene that this city turned into during my time away in Orlando from 1998 - 2006?  And what the hell is up with the club names here?  Most only have 3 letters in the name and almost none have more than one word.  Are we too drunk or stupid to work with syllables these days?

I think I hit some sort of weird breaking point this evening.  Going home tonight was an obstacle course of all the things I can't stand anymore.  Taxi drivers, club promoters, porn / escort peddlers, ladies too drunk to walk in heels, and guys too full of their own awesome uniqueness to realize they all look alike.  Honestly, I think it was the taxi driver that tried to kill me on the freeway that set me off.  I should be used to it by now as it is literally a daily event. 

I'm not as grumpy as I probably sound.  I'm very tired from the last couple of months and I'm on a bit of a long stretch for work right now.  I need AND AM TAKING a 3 day vacation in a couple of days.  Danny and I are going somewhere in California as yet to be determined.  This is what I need right now.  An escape.  Then I'll come back refreshed and ready to machete my way through Skankopolis again.

One of my cats, Mr. Yang, is always coming up with new strange behaviors (examples 1 and 2) to keep Danny and I on our toes.  But in the past couple of weeks, he's developed a new "hobby" that keeps him on my toes.

Since kitten-hood, he has always ended each night by jumping up on the bed and kneading the super soft blanket across the foot of the bed before laying down for the night.  He does this standing up and it lasts about 5 to 10 minutes.  It looks like he is marching.  He takes this task very seriously and cannot be stopped either by distraction or force.  It makes watching the TV a little difficult.

But lately, he has added a twist.  Now he has to knead my shins under the soft blanket.  See the slightly demonic-looking photo.  Sounds great, huh?  A nice deep tissue massage for your aching feet each night before sleep?  Yeah, not so much.  He stomps on my ankle with his back feet while simultaneously pushing his front feet into the muscle right behind my shin.  Holy crap, it hurts!  And as I said, he can't be stopped.  He will follow my feet around under the covers for the 5 or 10 minutes, pounding away at my shins until I feel like Nancy Kerrigan.  You know that person at your job that likes to give shoulder rubs but sucks at it?  But they're just so nice that you can't "no, stop it, you shoulder maiming monster".  Yep, that's my cat.

If only I could get him to channel this kind of energy into something more profitable... like stomping grapes into wine.

I just found a couple of photos of myself on my cellphone from the past few weeks.  I don't remember why they were taken exactly but wow, I look totally creepy in one and a bit used in the other.  I think this latest round of busy days and late nights is taking its toll.  I need some Oriental Pearl Cream.

Or... maybe I could find some way to market this new look.  Hey, Hollywood!  You need someone to play a serial killer?  Or a zombie?  Or a serial killer zombie?  I'm your man!

OK, it's nearly 4am and time to go to sleep.  I'm starting to look like the right-hand picture again.

As of today, I've finished re-editing 26 of the 48 chapters in the fiction book I wrote a few years back called Shen.  I've been working on draft 10 for the past few months and it's going slowly but semi-steadily.  Those of you that are test-reading along, thank you and I'll be sending the latest chapters shortly.

Anyway, after reaching the end of the latest chapter edit today, I decided to shake things up and write out something new.  I've had a story idea for awhile that just never fully developed in my head.  However, the last few nights of insomnia helped with that.  So today, I wrote one chapter of this new story, which I'm calling The Captured right now.

I still don't have a complete plot or the character details worked out but I know the basic premise.  This single chapter is kind of a "proof of concept" or teaser for the whole story.  In fact, it would probably be the opening chapter.  If anyone is interested in taking a look, you can see it here: PDF or DOC.  It's only 6 1/2 pages and it is the very first draft.  However, feedback (good or bad) is appreciated (but not required).  By the way, it probably doesn't matter to most of you but just in case, this chapter does include descriptions of violence.

OK, this little distraction was fun.  Now back to finishing editing the other story...

I've been "off the grid" for a couple of weeks now.  Good timing considering that I started following a bunch of new people on Twitter and LiveJournal right before I basically stopped reading both.  I'm all caught up now though.  Anyway, the image above is what my life has been every day night for the past few weeks.  I've been staying up until 4am each night programming revisions and additions to some pretty cool control systems that my client, Platt Design Group, is installing in Redlands, CA.  If you missed it, the project is explained here.  I just felt like posting a quick screenshot of what I've been doing.  I think these projects I work on sometimes sound like I'm just programming All-In-One remotes so I wanted to show off the real thing a little.  Click on the picture for a larger image. 

I just got home this evening from a 2 day stay in Redlands, CA.  This was my second trip out there to program Crestron control systems for a new state-of-the-art corporate headquarters that ESRI built there.  I don't normally get excited about corporate presentation / conference rooms but this place is like the businessman's Starship Enterprise.

I talked a little bit about this after my last trip (see here).  Three of the 9 rooms I'm working on (so far) use Christie DLP projectors that are edge-blended and cover entire walls.  In one room, it's back-projected onto a frosted glass wall that also acts as a marker white board.

I was originally asked to program Crestron for 8 rooms.  Four are now fully functional, one is partly up and running (since the employees are already moving in), three are in the hardware installation phase, and we just added the 9th.  I may be getting more rooms as we go and there is talk of us redoing some of the auditorium controls.

What is cool is that I've learned that this is the first major installation of the Crestron Digital Media systems that we are using.  Some of the configurations we're using have never been done so I'm apparently the first programmer to deal with some of this gear in the field and on this scale.  I'm also told that they plan to write an article about this installation because of the uniqueness of it.  This thing gets cooler the longer I stay involved.  So far so good.

I'm home now and exhausted.  This is the middle of 12 days of work (including my regular job) but it's worth it so far.  Now it's time to get some sleep (and get some more programming done).  :-)