Capote: 
Great movie. Is really less about Capote and more about the events surrounding the writing of In Cold Blood, the true account of the brutal murder of a rural Kansas family. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal is top notch and the film itself is beautiful and often funny. I left feeling heavy with thought and emotional stillness, which to me is the sign that I have seen something worth seeing. This feeling persisted. Highly recommended.
Today I received the best form letter ever. I’m thinking about getting it framed because things like this never happen. It was completely unexpected in the sense that I have never heard of this. Read the full letter below.
Dear NTHEA Borrower:
North Texas Higher Education Authority (NTHEA) is a non-profit student loan secondary market. Because of our non-profit status we are able to offer our student loan borrowers benefits that other agencies / lenders may not. One of these benefits is rewarding student loan borrowers by forgiving the remaining balance on their student loan(s).
We are pleased to inform you that the remaining balance on your student loan(s) owned by NTHEA and serviced by Nelnet, Inc. have been forgiven. Your loan(s) are now considered paid in full and will be reported as such to all appropriate parties.
Because this forgiven amount is less than $600.00 you do not have to report this amount as income to the federal government, and you will not be receiving a form 1099 from us.
NTHEA thanks you for your business. If you have future student loan needs we encourage you to choose an NTHEA lending partner.
If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-366-4372 or metro 817-461-2333.
Sincerely,
North Texas Higher Education Authority
www.nthea.com
This means I am completely without debt of any sort, which has not been true since I started college almost exactly ten years ago. That’s quite an anniversary present. Thank you, student loan gods. I only had the equivalent of two payments left, but this is a very welcome surprise. I had been doubling and tripling up my payments so much that my next loan payment was not due until June of 2010. The funny part is I just started snowballing on the student loans as soon as they had online payments. Before that I just waited for my statement each month. What’s my secret? I made it a habit to pay a little more each time I thought about it, even if it was only $25. That adds up.
What does this mean for you? Pay off your student loans ahead of time and you’ll pay less in interest and maybe even get a little parting gift at the end of it all.
Josalyn came down for the weekend and it was relaxing. We were able to visit with a few of our friends, something that never seems to happen enough but is always beneficial. Saturday night we went over to Mike’s, who was in town from San Mateo for the game conference. I used to work with him over at Origin Systems / EA before they closed the studio and shipped everyone out to California. It was great to see him again and I enjoyed meeting his friends from Austin. It’s nice to go to a party where people nerd out and have intelligent conversation about topics like the differences between the various Protestant denominations without it descending to close-mindedness or polemics about faith or the lack thereof. I’ve reached a point where I can respect political or religious differences without judgment for the most part. I just try to listen what people have to say, and if I find myself in disagreement I try not to make an issue of it since everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how ridiculous.
It just so happens that two of Mike’s female friends attended seminary, one as a Presbyterian and one as a Baptist. I learned a lot about the Presbyterian belief system, which is very different from my experience being raised as a Baptist. They actually do communion and have creeds, which is something you don’t hear about in Baptist church, not to mention the fact that the Baptists do not have female ministers. The party was the perfect opportunity for my well-worn Baptist joke: “Question: Why do you take two Baptists with you when you go fishing? Answer: If you take one he’ll drink all the beer.” If you don’t get it I can explain. All in all, it was a lot of fun even though we just sat around the kitchen table and talked.
Sunday we called Sab and woke up the hungover Courtney and Phillip for lunch. We ended up going out for coffee afterward and talked until four or five in the afternoon. It was very nice. I’ve noticed that I’m in a lot better mood if I spend time hanging out with people and talking. We humans, as social creatures, have a need to rub our brains like stones against the brains of others.
That time of the year has arrived. That’s right. It’s pecan season. My mom and step-dad own a pecan orchard, Boenig Pecans, near Seguin and they’re offering this year’s crop for sale. If you’re a pecan or nut fan you will love them. You can order from their site if you’re interested. If you’re not interested I guarantee your grandma probably is.
Pecan pie is the best variety of pie. If you don’t believe me then you haven’t had good pecan pie. And, everyone I know says “pee-kawns” or “puh-kawns”, so don’t go around talking about “pee-cans” as in “there is too much pepper on my poppykosh…but I’d be proud to partake of your pee-can pie!”.
I will be revamping the Boenig Pecans website soon, although I’m not sure if they should keep their motto, “Because our nuts are bigger.” This is a reference to the joke my mom repeats tirelessly about Jim winning an award for the biggest nuts in Guadalupe County. Groan.
The news was all over this morning about Bush’s new pick for the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito. Like everyone else, I don’t know anything about him aside from his support for spousal notification with regards to abortion, which is likely to create a lot of controversy. Ideological considerations aside, it is interesting to me that there would be two Italian-Americans on the Supreme Court if he is confirmed. We are legion.
On the McLaughlin Group on Sunday, John McLaughlin put forth the compelling theory that Bush withdrew Miers’ nomination to swap in a more ideological Conservative so that he would have the motivated support of his base in the event the Plame-gate damage gets worse.
When I go home from lunch I’m amazed how the commercials are always lowest common denominator stuff.
First wild beavers for 500 years Beavers have been reintroduced to England, 500 years after they were hunted to extinction for their fur.
Barnacle Press A collosal compendium of our collective comic culture. A real treasure you will need to bookmark. I compell you! There is much to gnaw on here that will make your drawing hand itch with anticipation.
How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days: Tips and Tricks from 4 Grad Students Who Made Over 50 Games in 1 Semester Courtesy of digg. Productivity is the most important thing in almost any enterprise.
I’m trying to learn more about Flash since it’s fun and challenging. A lot of times when you’re dealing with clients their inclination is to have something visually interesting with animation and some level of interactivity and Flash is good for that. Flash has several other good things going for it, like it’s harder to reverse engineer someone else’s Flash work, which has obvious benefits from the point of view of keeping business.
As I learn I am going to show the things I’ve learned to everyone else because many people are in a similar position in terms of being Flash novices. When I get more time I may put together a few tutorials in Wink.
A couple basics about Flash that bear mention:
One of the great things about Flash is that it supports scripting capabilities that allow you to give certain behaviors to different parts of your Flash movies. You can create buttons that move around when you click them, or you can play multimedia clips, for example. It’s very flexible. Flash has its own scripting language called ActionScript, which uses a syntax similar to JavaScript.
Here are a couple useful ActionScript things I learned last night you can use to for simple behaviors. I used Macromedia Flash MX. That may make a difference in how I do it. Just FYI.
on (press) {
getUrl ("http://www.website.com", "_blank");
}
Now when you test the movie, you should be able to click the button graphic and have it open the desired link in a new browser window. Tada! Simple.
Quick and dirty. Follow the directions above to create a button symbol in your default scene. Go to the menu and select “Insert” then “Scene” this will add an additional scene to your Flash movie. Use the “Edit scene” icon to switch to your various scenes. You may want to rename your scene by double clicking it’s name in the Scenes panel. I’ll go ahead and rename it to “blippo”. Throw a graphic into this new scene then switch back to your main scene.
Now add the following ActionScript to your button symbol just like you did in the previous example:
on (press) {
gotoAndPlay ("blippo", 1);
}
Now test the movie. When you click the button, it should go to the scene we named “blippo” at frame 1. You can obviously set the scene and frame number to whatever you need. Often times, you may want to goto a particular animation that starts in a particular frame. This is a good way to nest commonly used animations.
This is very very basic stuff. If I need to get any more basic let me know.
Japan developing remote control for humans “I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced — mistakenly — that this was the only way to maintain my balance.”
On my way to Ninfa’s to meet Sabby for lunch a large bird appeared in the road before me. At first I thought it was a roadrunner, but then as I approached it turned out to be a pheasant. Yes, a pheasant crossing the access road of 183 continuing on to walk the barren gravel wasteland under the eight lanes of 183. As I made the turnaround, I stopped to watch him on the other side where he almost got hit by one of those trucks with the wood chipper on the back. I don’t know if he made it across. Where did he come from? I don’t know, but I don’t think wild pheasants live in the Austin city limits, not to mention in the business parks infesting central austin. How do I know it was a “he”? Simple. Female pheasants like females of most bird species are brownish and inconspicuous. It reminded me of the time a rooster decided to roost in our yard.
