Last week, I let my two year mark on LJ slip by, probably due to my crazy work and personal schedule. Well, it’s better late than never I suppose. I’ll just get to a quick recap here:

I thought that I would be prepared for this year’s summer crunch. Having survived my first cycle last year, I put in another 10 weeks of hard 12+ hr days to get our products out the door. What I wasn’t prepared for is that when most of the products shipped, we kept at the same pace, for several weeks afterward. Finally things have slowed down a bit, we are now in the process of identifying errors in the field from end users and then fixing them in-code for a refresh of our master layouts in December.

Also there was a dreaded “Re-Org” in our division, which usually happens after all the moneymaking products are on their way to release. The chaff is separated from the wheat, and in a refreshing turn of events, the stupid or incompetent were also removed, from both the trenches and the corner offices. As the personnel cards got shuffled, I got put in charge of managing my, albeit very small, department. It was also nice to see people that I worked with who also worked hard get put in positions that they deserved. A little corporate/cosmic justice rolled the way of the little guy this time, and for that I’m truly thankful.

Summer seemed to blast by, but not without its truly nice moments. Chief among them was mikeromo's wedding out at Joshua Tree.

Made it to Miguel Mig’s “Salted” music label CD release Party at the remodeled Vanguard. That guy has got the superstar skills and the smooth vibe down to an art. Nice Live vocals by Aya, (she is smoking in person!).
I followed that up with another visit by my fave DJ, Roger Sanchez, in Hollywood. In short, another great lesson on what it takes to rock a big venue with quality house music. The crowd was a little to Dolce & Gabbana for my taste, but I still loved it. My planned summer desert excursion featuring Rabbit in the Moon got cancelled, but from the sounds of it, that was probably the right decision for the promoters to make. Topped it all off with some actual below ground tribal love during Doc Martin's Sublevel CD Release Party Halloween weekend. Doc and Lilia cut some tracks in a studio in Japan this year, and I'm really looking forward to hearing some of that.

While I haven’t talked about web events or developments in a while, (seems like there’s a ton of sites out there that do that anyway) I really have to comment on Sony’s decision to use rootkits to install DRM on user’s computers, which in turn, breaks your OS when you try to remove it. I won’t get into the details, but this is something you should know about before buying anything from Sony.

In other news, I’m freaking tired of hearing people blast the company I work for. I acknowledge the fact that people have a right to an opinion, but it bugs me that the impression I get is that people don’t understand that we are working very hard, every day, to make their lives easier and safer. It has actually made me think about Microsoft, and how everyone gives them a bad rap, but I’ll bet they are probably working a lot harder than we are, but it’s hard to say.

Podcasts are coming along nicely now, with another one coming out tomorrow or tonight. Still need to find some time to invest in working out some decent CSS layout for that pet domain.

Next weekend should be a real blast with Lisa Shaw at the King King on Friday, Dubtribe on Saturday, and Dmitry from Paris on Sunday.

There are rumors circulating that turkey day will be in vegas, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Cool Site: Hepcat Willy's - very nice retro-space age blog.
Cool Media: Urban Dead - Obvious exits are: North, Soulth, and Revolver.
Very Cool Media: Warcraft Reloded - Warcraft rendered in Flash, amazing work.