brainwagon

You’ve probably heard the expression that somebody is a “man of few words”. I’m not that guy. I’m a man of many words. I love to talk. I love to write. And yet, it is an odd paradox that when you actually feel like you have something to say, the words fly from you, leaving […]

From tiny acorns, giant oak trees grow. Likewise, seemingly trivial events and items can affect our lives. As a kid, I had been interested in computers for a while. I think it must have postdated the appearance of the Altair 8800, which debuted in Popular Electronics in 1974 (I would have been ten or so […]

Over on Facebook, I read a rather disturbing story about an Ohio humane officer who shot a litter of kittens within earshot of children. As someone who cohabits with an American shorthair (more later) this story is quite disturbing to me on multiple levels. But rather than dwell on this, I thought I’d use my […]

Here in the Bay Area, the Space Shuttle Endeavour did a victory lap, passing over Sacramento, the Golden Gate and many other Bay Area locations. Pixar Animation Studios is in Emeryville, quite close to the Bay Bridge, so I thought we had a pretty good chance of getting a good view. Sadly, all my good […]

About 5:30AM, I woke to find my bed slightly shaking, and maybe a hint of some noise. Just as I was about to drift off, a fairly violent jolt hit the house. Some various items were knocked off shelves, a fairly scary way to wake up. Carmen and I bolted for the door and waited […]

Back on July 8th, I wrote a brief post about mentoring. Hopefully, some of you read it. In case you didn’t, I made the completely unsupported claim that mentors don’t normally create interest, they merely nurture the interests that are already there. They also serve to help remove the obstacles that frustrate the enthusiasm of […]

One year ago today, we found out that Scrappy, our formerly feral cat had FIV, the feline immunodeficiency virus. The good news is, he’s alive and healthy! Scrappy’s early years are shrouded in mystery. I’m not certain whether he really was a feral cat, or whether he might have been an escaped cat. When he […]

Well, it’s the three year anniversary of my last trip into Portland during a freezing rain storm. You can read about my previous trip here, but today I’m flying into PDX and it looks like we won’t have a repeat of my previous experience: the temperature is above freezing, and I’m coming in during the […]

Eighteen long years ago was my first day at Pixar (before it was Pixar Animation Studios). Today, I’m celebrating by taking a bunch of my fellow Pixarians out for pizza and general good times. According to wikipedia, it was also the day that the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up […]

Sometimes coming to work at Pixar surprises you with odd sights. Today, it was this Porsche Carrera in our atrium, which had been modified to be Sally, one of the characters from our upcoming summer movie release Cars. My suggestion that employees should be given one (sans modification if it would reduce the cost, I’m […]

Well, those generous guys at Industrial Light and Magic decided to send us cookies to help us celebrate Pixar’s 20 year anniversary. They were all printed with images of Yoda. Cool! Thanks guys! [tags]Pixar,ILM,Cookies[/tags] Addendum: These guys apparently made the cookies.

It’s now 4:04AM on Monday, and I’m up, typing on my laptop. Not by choice, mind you. Like most people, I have 40 hours to put in over the next week, and like most people I don’t get enough sleep as it is. But Scrappy is a handful during the night. You see, he’s still […]

Well, Scrappy did end up spending the night at the vets. They decided to anesthetize him, install a drain and then make him suffer the indignity of wearing a lampshade on his head for the next three days. On Monday, I’ll have to take him back to have the drain removed, and then in a […]

Fifteen years ago today was my official hire date at Pixar Animation Studios. Because nobody works for a company for fifteen years anymore, I thought it would be nice to commemorate the occasion by asking some of the people that I have enjoyed working with over the years out to lunch at Hahn’s Hibachi, a […]

Yesterday afternoon, I got a phone call from my son who informed me that the virus scanner on his Windows box was disabled, and that it would no longer run. When I got home to check it out, I found that my laptop, which used the identical virus scanner (Computer Associates EZ Antivirus) had been […]