Category Archives: My Diary

Farewell…

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 you unable or unwilling to communicate.

Today, we had to say goodbye to Scrappy, our little gray striped American shorthair:

I write this blog (in part) as a kind of a message-in-a-bottle to my future self. On the anniversary of a post, it recirculates in the side bar on the left. Usually it reminds me of some project I did (and likely abandoned). Or something that I was interested in. A year from now, what am I going to want to remember?

He had the most beautiful green eyes. He never stopped trying to learn to speak. He would look you right in the eye and patiently meow at you repeatedly until you understood what he wanted you to do.

He knew he was part of our family. In the evening when we’d be watching TV, he’d find a place between Carmen and me, either on the couch or on the folding footrest of our recliner and would sit and sleep while we watched TV. If we went upstairs, he’d do the same, until we turned the TV off and then he’d wander off.

Despite being deadly to birds, lizards, and dangerous to other cats, he never scratched or bit at humans. Even when when we gave him a bath, or had to put him in a box to take him to the vet, he would struggle, whine, or complain, but never hiss, never bite, never scratch. And after we’d finish bathing him, he’d get over it immediately, knowing that we were just trying to help him.

He purred a lot. He could meow loudly and insistently. Especially in the morning when I was late feeding him.

He was smart. He learned to raise his paw to beg for special treats.

He loved catnip and to play with his orange shoe lace.

Yesterday he was outside, sniffing at the grass, just sniffing. He loved sunshine and fresh air. While we may have converted him from a mostly feral outdoor cat into an indoor kitty, he always loved to be outside.

We were with him at the end.

He was special. He was loved. He is missed.

My programming career began with this magazine article…

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 then), but I do recall reading articles about the COSMAC ELF computer in 1976 and 1977. Quite frankly, I don’t have the faintest clue why they attracted me. Perhaps it was just the idea that you could display a picture of the Enterprise on your TV screen (in horrendously blocky black and white), and that it wasn’t absolutely impossible to imagine that I could earn enough money to build one. Some interest in this old computer still exists, you can build a version of that old ELF with lots of upgrades. Seems like fun. But I digress. Constantly.

My first computer would actually be signficantly more powerful. In December of 1980, all of my savings from a year of yard work was pooled with some additional funds that Mom kicked in as a Christmas gift, and on December 24th, I got my first computer: an Atari 400 with 16k of memory, and a BASIC cartridge.

I didn’t even have a storage device. It would take a few more months until I saved enough money to get one of the Atari 410 tape drives. I began to plunk along with BASIC, writing programs to do simple things like adding numbers, and changing the color of the screen. I also got a copy of Star Raiders. And I began to wonder, why were the BASIC programs that I was writing so… pitiful, compared to what was possible. I had begun to read articles from the computing literature of the day that hinted at things like “player-missile graphics”, and I knew a tiny bit about machine code.

This all changed with game called “Shoot”, published in Compute! Here’s a link to the article. It was like having a pocket watch, and knowing what the time was, but then one day levering the back of the watch open, and revealing the mechanisms inside. It was the source code to a game that was simple, yet clearly beyond what I was accomplishing with my forays into BASIC programming. It had the complete assembly code, available for inspection. I dutifully typed in the code, and played the game for ten minutes or so. But the real game was the code! Reading it over and over again, I learned a lot. I experimented more. I got the Atari Assembler cartridge, and then ultimately got MAC/65, a much more powerful macro assembler. I experimented. Tweaked. Hacked. Learned. And it never really stopped. Thanks to Compute! and John Palevich.

Soapbox: A Story and a Request on Behalf of Your Pets

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 internet soapbox to tell you the story of my current cat, Scrappy.

I don’t know whether Scrappy was feral, or merely homeless, but back in 2004 I was working outside in our backyard when a skinny, bedraggled looking cat nervously edged up to me. He was emaciated to the point that he just looked odd. His face was all drawn and his fur was matted. He meowed at me with a rather plaintive sound. I found him something to eat, but he wouldn’t let me get close. Over the next few days, I got him some proper dried cat food and water, and fed him outside. He returned regularly, and began to look healthier. And prettier. We slowly started to move his food dish inside, although he was still an outdoor cat. After a while he’d spend an hour or two in the house, and would let us pet him. Our neighbors next door also would fed him, and he became a regular feature. Eventually, we named him.

He got his name because likes to fight with other cats. While he was timid with humans, he seemed to like to get in fights with some of the other homeless cats that seemed plentiful in the open space behind our home. One day, he didn’t show up for food. I found him in our garage, clearly in some pain, with his fur all matted and wet, and several fresh bite wounds. It was then that all my patience in trying to get to handle him paid off: I put him in a carrier and took him to the vet. That first trip was scary for me: while he struggled with me when I tried to put him in the carrier, he didn’t scratch or bite. Once he was in, he was simply terrified. He cried and very clearly was hyperventilating.

After his first (but not his last) vet visit, we got him all cleaned up and patched. The vet estimated he was maybe a year old or so. We got him all up on his vaccinations, had him microchipped, and found that he’d been neutered, although whether it was because he had a previous home or because he had been part of a program that caught and released feral cats in our neighborhood, we couldn’t be sure. Over the next few years, he got in a few more fights, eventually causing us to endure a painful week of howling when we finally made him a 100% indoor cat, and, minus some brief escapes where he still managed to find someone to fight with, he’s now a permanent fixture with us.

He’s a great cat. Smart, affectionate, and now that he’s fed and taken care of, rather handsome. He likes to spend time between my wife and me, on the footrest of our recliners, out in the living room where his scratching posts, or looking out the window. We’ve taught him to shake hands. I love him. I only wish he’d last forever.

Okay, that’s the story, now the sermon.

Cats and dogs are here because we humans like them as pets, or at least, because we think we do. Sometimes the reality of being a pet owner doesn’t mesh well with what we expect, and animals end up being abandoned or sent to shelters. The Humane Society says that between six and eight million cats and dogs will enter shelters each year. Of those, about three to four million will be adopted, but by their estimates 2.7 million adoptable animals will be euthanized. That is tragic. The story that started this post seemed monstrous to me, but the fact is that whether these kittens were shot or not, they very likely might have been euthanized, even if they were adoptable. Given the joy that my adopted cat-friend has brought me, I can’t help but be saddened by that.

So, I implore you:

First of all, if you choose to adopt a pet, be a good caretaker. Think hard about the commitment you have to make to the animal. If you question your ability to care for your pet long term, then buy a plant instead. Animals are living things, and require care and attention. Educate yourself on what it will take to be a good caretaker, and make an informed decision.
Spay or neuter your pets. Please. Really. This is just an extension of being a good caretaker. Spaying and neutring animals helps fight pet overpopulation, which is currently overtaxing shelters nationwide. There are other good reasons to do it, but to me, that will do as a start.
Please, don’t de-claw your cats. Lots of people think this is no big deal, but declawing is actually a pretty draconian procedure, basically equivalent to amputating your fingers at the endmost knuckle. It is far better for you to train your cats to use a scratching post and accept the occasional nail trim. Declawing cats is traumatic for them, and often can result in other behavior problems.
When you are getting a pet, consider getting a shelter animal. These animals are at the last stop, and are looking for a best friend. The Shelter Pet Project website is a great place to start. Until our animal shelters are empty, doesn’t adopting a pet make sense?

Fare thee well, Endeavour…

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 camera gear was stolen in our recent burglary, so all I had was my trusty iPad. I positioned myself along with lots of others out in the soccer field, and we caught this (not particularly amazing, but still impressive) view of Endeavour and it’s chase plane heading out toward the Golden Gate.

Fellow Pixarian Chris Walker was apparently at the Alameda Air Station with a better camera, and got much better results.

Endeavour was constructed as the replacement for the Challenger, and flew 25 missions into space, amassing 299 days of flight time in orbit. While digging around, I found this rare glimpse of it docked with the International Space Station, photographed from a departing Soyuz capsule.

Endeavour will find it’s final rest at the California Science Center in Exposition Park in Los Angeles. I’ll have to go have a closer look when it’s installed. Very cool.

Earthquake!

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 for aftershocks: I thought I felt an immediate smaller shock, but since then, things have been fairly quiet. Worse earthquake I’ve felt in 20 years here (I missed the Loma Prieta).

Here is the seismogram that a local station recorded:

Phew. Exciting. All of our local twitter/facebook friends are reporting that things are okay where they are at. Doubt I’m going back to bed though. 🙂

Parents can trump mentors…

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 newcomers, providing material, advise, or inspiration.

Gee, that sounds like a parent, doesn’t it?

Last week, I had the opportunity to think about this topic a lot. On Wednesday, I got to tell this
story, which I’ll go ahead and tell you now.

When I was sixteen or so, I can remember being in my grandmother’s dining room, excitedly explaining something about my (then new) Atari computer to her. Remember: this was 1981 or so, and I think it was moderately safe to say that grandmothers as a demographic were fairly ignorant of microprocessors. But my enthusiasm was bubbling over, and she patiently listened to me until I was forced to take a breath and wandered away.

She wandered back into the kitchen, and had the following conversation with my Mom:

Grandma: “Boy, Mark sure seems to know a lot about computers, huh?”
Mom: “Yeah, he’s pretty smart.”
Grandma: “I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about.”
Mom: “Yeah, me neither.”
Grandma: “He doesn’t seem to mind though.”
Mom: “Nope, just keep nodding and smiling. He doesn’t care if you understand, he just wants you to listen.

I used to believe that this story was about my grandmother. She was, after all, a remarkable woman. She taught me a lot: how to cook, how to crochet. Most of the money I spent on that first computer came from mowing her lawns. She made me lemonade on hot days. She would make pies and cobblers from the blackberries and huckleberries I’d pick. When I got my driver’s license, I would drive her on errands. Sadly, when college came, I saw quite a bit less of her. Her breast cancer reasserted itself, and she passed away about 26 years ago. I still miss her, and think of her when I make pickles, potato salad, or pork shoulder.

But I didn’t realize until last week that this story was also about my mom. She too, was a remarkable woman. After all, in 1980, she was willing to support the insane desire of a sixteen year old boy to learn about computers. She didn’t have any expertise, but she patiently accepted that what I wanted to learn about good for me, and she did all she could to help remove the barriers that might have stymied my initial interest. That early interest blossomed into a rewarding career and remains the core of the intellectual joys that you get a glimpse of through my blog. And of course, she was my mom, and loved me (and the rest of her children) with the kind of love that only a mother can.

On Friday July 8th, I received a phone call that my Mom had passed away. I got to tell the story I just related to you at her funeral to her friends and family.

In the grand scheme of things, expertise isn’t that important. Knowledge isn’t that important. My mother and grandmother didn’t have any expertise or special insight into what I was doing. What they did have was love, and that love gave them faith that the path that I saw for myself (even at age 16) was worth supporting and aiding. They removed obstacles. They loved me for who I was and what I wanted to do, unconditionally.

I cannot begin to express the degree to which she will be missed.

Addendum: You might have asked where Dad was in all of this. Dad was awesome too. At age ten or so, I got it into my head that I wanted to build a telescope. I had read some book that said you could do it. Without any real expertise, he supported the project. We sent off to Edmund Scientific and got a mirror grinding kit to make a 6” mirror. We dutifully ground and polished it. But in the midst of that project, he developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which eventually claimed his life in 1978, and I never got to finishing the mirror or putting it into a telescope. Years later, I moved to California, and discovered the Telescope Maker’s Workshop at the Chabot Science Center in Oakland. I got it into my head that I would like to finish the telescope I had started all those years ago. My mom still had it tucked away in her closet. With help from the workshop, I finished that mirror (and went on to help many others do the same as a volunteer instructor) and finished the scope (mostly, it could still use some paint) with the help of my brother. I still have the scope, and will never sell it.

This week, I do feel sad for my loss, but there is no need for pity. All three of the people I’ve lost have left my life full of joy. If I could do the same, I’d consider my own life “well lived”.

Scrappy

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 first showed up in our back yard, he was essentially starving, and very, very timid. He wouldn’t even come inside our back patio door to get fed, and wouldn’t tolerate being picked up (although he would just squirm, he wouldn’t scratch). Over a period of weeks and months, I slowly gained his trust, and he would begin to tolerate brief, and finally increasing amounts of time inside. We took him to the vet and found that he was neutered. It’s not uncommon for strays to be captured, neutered, and have their ears notched and re-released (Scrappy has a notch in his right ear). But he remained an outdoor cat for the most time. He would very nearly hyperventilate when put into a cat carrier.

But he was a fighter (hence the name “Scrappy”). Once or twice a year he’d get in a squabble with some other cat, and end up with bites on his face or front legs, and scratches, and I’d have to give him antibiotics, and occasionally keep him inside (where he’d squawk incessantly, and climb walls and get very upset). After one of these episodes, he had a persistent skin infection, and I took him to a different vet, where he was tested for FIV. He came back positive.

I was very sad, since I’m very partial to Scrappy.

I was told that I shouldn’t allow him outside, both for his own protection and to prevent the spread of the disease. FIV leaves him susceptible to infections, and the best way was to isolate him from any of the dangers that he normally is exposed to.

Well, housebreaking him was a challenge. First was teaching him to use a litterbox. We placed one in the upstairs bathroom, and would periodically place his paws in it. He would immediately squirm and bolt. He cried at the door to be let out. No, strike that. He’d wail. He’d howl. He’d beg. He’d cry. That went on for three days.

Then, he figured it out.

His skin cleared up. He added about a pound. We tried to make sure he had lots of toys and physical contact to make sure that he remained stimulated and not bored. He went through a brief period of time where he would howl in the middle of the night, but I got a small squirt gun and a couple of nights of that, and he got the hint. Now, he wakes us up at around 7:30 every morning (not too bad).

He’s healthy and happy. Now that the weather is improving, I’m taking him out into our back yard for a bit of supervised grass sniffing. He isn’t actively trying to get out most of the time: we’ve left doors open accidently, only to find him sitting on his chair or on our staircase when we search for him.

I’m beginning to wonder if I should have him tested again: his health has been so remarkably good I’m wondering about the possibility of a false positive. But then again, we’ve been treating him as if he is, and there is nothing else we could do, so maybe it doesn’t matter. The only real change I would consider if he wasn’t FIV is maybe getting a second cat to serve as a companion for him. But my outdoor stray has become an indoor “lap fungus”. And we are very fond of our furball.

Hope the next year for Scrappy goes just as well.

I’ve now continued the long tradition of blogging about our pets.

On the three year anniversary of…

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 morning, rather than the afternoon. I don’t mind driving in snow, it’s the insidious black ice that Portland gets that really scares the crap out of me. There is only one mistake that you can make in such conditions: getting in a car at all. Witness the chaos (from a previous storm):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G7xdY_ggM0

I’m not anticipating any such excitement on this trip, but once again I’ve pressed my friend Jeff into picking me up at the airport, and then I’ll go pick up a rental when I’m closer to home.

It’s an odd Christmas for me. It’ll be nice to visit Mom and my brother, but I already miss Carmen, and it will be the first Christmas that we’ll have without seeing our son. Still, a few days, and I’ll be back cooking and cleaning and otherwise making myself useful for the holiday. Haven’t got my Christmas menu planned out yet, but I’ll figure out something.

Happy Pixar Day…

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 its monopoly power, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Other events from that month: Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison. Exxon was indicted on five criminal counts for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson. An agreement was reached to reunify Germany.

I was 25, about the same age as many of the kids I work with these days. I’ve spent nearly half of my life working here, and I must admit, through trials and tribulations, ups and downs, it remains a really, really terrific place to work, and I have been truly blessed with getting able to work with some of the most talented and nice people on projects that are truly amazing achievements in movie making.

To any ex-Pixarians I’ve worked with who have moved on, I salute you too.

In our lobby this morning…

Sally, starring in Cars by Pixar

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 a considerate guy) is, in their words “undergoing all the review the suggestion deserves”.

[tags]Pixar,Cars,Porsche,Sally[/tags]

Addendum: Sorry for the small picture size, but that’s all the pixels my camera phone can really put out.

Yoda Cookies from ILM

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.

On caring for partially wild kitties…

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 really a feral cat. This means two things:

He’s active at night.
He wants to be outside. A lot.

I’m supposed to keep him quiet and not have any serious exercise, but I’m also supposed to keep him inside. These two goals are simply not compatible. I went to bed about midnight, and slept until about 1:30AM. Then, he started banging his head against my bedroom door. So, I placed him in the downstairs bathroom. Whereupon he urinated all over everything, tore stuff off the wall, and generally had every panic reaction you could imagine.

Now, it’s 4:08AM, and while I’m downstairs on the couch, he seems content (for the moment) to rest at the foot of the couch. I’m hoping it lasts for a couple of hours. Maybe I’ll try to learn something more about Asterisk, and pray for the sun to come up.

I’m supposed to take him to the vet at 9:00. They are supposed to remove his drains and then I can take him home, but frankly if I can’t let him go outside, I’m going to have to have him boarded for a couple of days, for his sanity and mine.

Okay, just for mine really. He’s now crying once every couple of minutes, and the funny thing is, I understand exactly. Neither of us is having the night that we want to. I hope he’s better soon.

My New Lamp

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 week all the stitches will come out. Eeesh. Poor little guy. The things we do for our pets.

An Anniversary of Sorts…

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 Korean barbecue place in Jack London Square. I didn’t bring a camera, but Tom was nice enough to snap this picture of the aftermath.

I’m not the kind of person who spends a great deal of time looking toward the past, but I think it’s good to sit back and consider where you’ve been. I’ve been a part of something really terrific, working for the premier animation company in the world, with some of the best people in the world. To all who showed up, thanks for making the first fifteen years of work enjoyable, exciting, challenging and fun.

I was asked to think of what my greatest Pixar moment was, and it really is hard to pick, since there have been so many. Somewhat arbitrarilly, and yet totally worthy, I chose Jen’s invention of “Digital Dailies Bingo” during production for The Incredibles. This neatly solved the problem of preserving the sanity (what little we may have initially possessed) of the rendering team during a challenging production by allowing us to turn the adversity of having shots kicked back for fixes into a game. Inspired team-building brilliance!

Other big ones:

Everything related to Toy Story. The first time I ever wore a tuxedo. My first premiere. The first time I ever saw my name in the credits.
Watching h52, the “Hundred Mile Dash” sequence in The Incredibles for the first time in a theater, and listening to everyone cheer at how cool it looks. I think the motion blur did work out really well.
Having a $1400 dinner tab for four or five people in Washington D.C. on Motorola as part of the production of Cosmic Voyage. It’s a pity they didn’t spend more money on rendercheck: they managed to misspell both my name and Don’s.
Just the day-to-day work of working on Pixar’s RenderMan product, with some very talented software engineers.

To all who showed up to help me celebrate, thanks a bunch for fifteen terrific years.

[tags]Pixar[/tags]

Addendum: Flicker-ized for your enjoyment.

Score: Virus 2, Mark’s Windows PCs: 2

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 similarly afflicted. I ended up uninstalling EZ Antivirus (why would you use antivirus software that got disabled by a virus) and installed Norton’s on my laptop and F-Secure on my son’s machine, scanned them, and all seems better.

My wife system which runs McAffee seemed to be unaffected. I have another machine which wasn’t powered on and was running Nortons, which similarly seems to be unaffected.

Thanks Microsoft. Thanks Computer Associates. Nice system you’ve got there.

Google Virus News

[tags]Microsoft,Computer Associates,Virus,Nyxem,Blackworm[/tags]