Warning to regular readers of this blog: SEVERE Nerd Alert.

A lot of folks I know who started their blogs out on Blogger have used HaloScan for commenting since before Blogger implemented comments. Since HaloScan is shutting down in the next few days, you’d think you might want to move all your old comments to Blogger.

Good luck.

There’s really no practical reason why someone at Blogger can’t write some sort of comments parser to handle the XML files that HaloScan spits out, but so far, they haven’t. If you want to get it done right now, the only way I found to make it work is a ridiculously cumbersome process.

Basically, that process is to import everything into a WordPress blog where it can all be properly combined, then re-export it, run it through python script, and upload it back into Blogger.

I’ve decided to write up the entire procedure I went through both as an exercise in writing documentation and in order to help anyone else who’s crazy enough to want to try this. If you think you have the patience for this (or would just like to see exactly how insane I am), hit the “read the rest” link that follows.

Read the rest…

I’ve gotten into something of a winter funk. It started out with the aforementioned really awesome stomach bug that left my innards out of sorts and me curled up in pain for a week, and continued into a solid week of pouring rain in LA.

Rain in L.A. somehow seems much more depressing and draining than rain anywhere else, probably because it’s always sunny here and the change of pace is so much more severe.

So between the illness and the rain, I’ve been tempted many times these last few weeks to just curl up on my couch and sleep the day away. Some days, I manage to fight the urge and actually get up and get a load or two of laundry done.

But more often than not the last couple of weeks, Chaplin will jump up on me, and either curl up between my feet or on my chest. The power of a sleeping cat is utterly ridiculous when it comes to draining me of any ability to stay awake. He’s like a purring hot water bottle.

I can sleep 10 hours a night and if I don’t snap myself out of it, I’ll still nap another two hours with the kitty. Which is exactly what happened last night and this afternoon.

I’ve mostly only been getting out to go to the gym recently, and I think I need to make sure I keep changing things up a bit more in order to prevent myself from literally sleeping my life away.

The first thing I need to do is get back to dragging myself to the gym in the morning rather than the afternoon – I always have way more energy after the gym, and am consequently way better at fighting off cat-induced sleepiness.

I also think I need to increase the time I spend away from my apartment, even though it may increase the danger of me spending money. That’s been my primary unemployment excuse for never leaving the house: Staying in is almost always cheaper than doing anything other than bike riding outside.

I’m at the point where I’m so averse to spending money that I can’t really bring myself to go to the local coffeehouse or sandwich shop and gank their wifi just for a change of scenery, because I’ll be tempted to at least order a hideously overpriced beverage if not a sandwich that costs more than I have budgeted for my entire day’s worth of meals.

So I think it’s time for me to hit up my friendly local parks and maybe go sit and get my reading-learning done out by the ocean when it’s a smidge less windy than it has been. Maybe I’ll even break down and go to a library.

The fact that it’s supposed to pour again all day tomorrow (well, today at this point) means that at least the “go outside more” part of this plan won’t start until Wednesday, but I think putting my finger on the problem will at least help me address it.

Until I was about 21, I thought I was going to be a rock star.

Until I was 28, I thought I was going to make movies and TV for a living.

Until I was ____, I thought I was going to be a professional computer nerd.

—

Life has taken a lot of twists and turns for me since the writers’ strike of 2007-2008. Since that strike began on November 5, 2007, I have spent almost twelve of these last 24 months unemployed.

Part of that was the strike. Part of that was my decision to move into the production line and out of working directly for producers, which is an inherently more volatile career path.

But much of it has been the way the bottom has absolutely fallen out of filming in L.A. The combination of the strike starting a rearrangement of the way the business works and the economy in general going down the tubes has contributed to a precipitous drop in filming here. There’s just no work.

I realized a couple months ago as I was making my bajillionth phone call looking for work that I have not received one phone call back since June. June was also my last interview, for a job I had locked down until an actor decided to put in a good word for his niece, and then she had it locked down.

I’ve offered to take PA jobs again, but they’re not looking to take someone with as much experience in higher-up jobs as I have. In some cases, they think it’s because I think I’m above the scut work (which I don’t, I wouldn’t be applying for a PA job if I did), and in some cases, it seems they think I’ll outshine them (with the people who are insecure enough to actually worry about this, that might be a more valid concern).

Everywhere I look in terms of what my skills can get me in the entertainment business, I either see jobs that are so severely overworked and underpaid that I would rather work at Starbucks again than take them, because at least at Starbucks I would get health insurance, or nothing at all.

And frankly, the way things are going right now with the economy and the out-of-state filming incentives and the studios and networks freaking the fuck out about every last penny, I don’t see that scenario changing in the next 18-24 months at the absolute earliest.

Sometimes, you just wake up and realize that the universe is trying to tell you something. And the universe is telling me it’s time to do something else with my life.

—

And now, a brief comic interlude:

Click to enlarge.

From Amazing Super Powers.

—

I’ve always been a pop-culture nerd, but I wasn’t a serious computer nerd until the last 3-4 years. I learned some HTML programming in college, and really enjoyed it, but the complete time-sink that is working in entertainment pulled me off the track that would have kept me learning more about programming.

While the primary technical things that I’ve done in the last few years have involved technical troubleshooting and working as an ad-hoc IT Guy, what I really want to learn about is how to make computers do what I want them to.

And to do that, I need to learn how to program. I need to learn about architecture and C++ and the vagaries of programming for different platforms. I really want to learn how to take some ideas I have for programs and turn them into reality, from start to finish.

This, however, will require a fair amount of school. Right now I’m on step 0.1, taking some very basic classes at the community college level, trying to figure out exactly where my interests take me in terms of how I want to program.

My ultimate goal is a Masters’ in Computer Science. I’m in the middle of a choose-your-own-adventure bit of figuring out how that’s going to happen, but I do know that I’m sure as shit not going back to school just to get a second Bachelor’s.

I’m putting together an application to Stanford to start next fall, since a) they have an extraordinarily strong program and b) they are one of the only well-respected Graduate-level CS programs that will actually accept people who don’t have a CS undergrad background as long as they’re willing to learn.

It’s an extremely competitive program, so I have a fairly comprehensive backup plan standing by. I’ll get into it at some point down the road if need be.

If I do somehow manage to get into Stanford, however, I expect to hear a lot of this [note: mp3 link].

—

I’ve talked to a fair number of you guys about all this in differing degrees of depth, but I felt like I really needed to try and bring everything together in one place, almost more for my own purposes than to try and clarify it for everyone else.

I certainly won’t say I’m never working in entertainment again. If someone offered me a job right now that would help me keep my union health insurance even a bit longer, I’d take it in a second. But I don’t see my future in production anymore, and that’s where things have changed.

This is a path that’s been slowly coalescing over the last few months, and has picked up a lot of steam since about Labor day, when I finally accepted that I probably wouldn’t work in entertainment for much of the rest of the year.

It took a long time for the pieces to come together well enough for me to see them, but once they did, my way forward became much, much clearer. I’ve got a plan, or really a bunch of plans all leading in the same direction.

Now all I have to do is try and figure out how to get there from here.

I’ve been really tired all week, but somehow I’m still managing to stay up until 2 or 3am.

Chaplin seems to be biologically programmed to wake up at about 8am and knock shit over until I drag myself out of bed, so things are not going to be fun until I can convince my body that really, midnight is a perfectly reasonable time to go to sleep.

I haven’t had hard-core insomnia in a while, so I’d forgotten a few things about it. Things get much much quieter in my neighborhood, since the dull roar of the freeway fades to almost nothing.

Sounds I normally wouldn’t notice, like the ticking of the clock over my TV or the ringing in my ears from years of thinking I was going to be a rock star, become overwhelming.

The biggest problem with insomnia when unemployed is that it’s very difficult to motivate myself to get back on a normal schedule, because really, what do I really need to get up for?

Other than, you know, my sanity?

Another pair of unemployment funnies around the internets for your time-killing pleasure. From Indexed:

From Garfield Minus Garfield:

One that I’ve been saving for a while because it so defines the existence of the unemployed person, courtesy of Garfield Minus Garfield:

And one that was recently reposted by The Onion, Unemployed Man Getting Really Good At Unemployment:

Through a months-long process of trial and error, Higby has learned the tricks of the unemployment trade.

“Leaving the house every single day is very important, even if it’s just to spend a few hours at the coffee shop organizing the MP3 files on your laptop,” Higby said. “I try to be out the door by 2 or 3 in the afternoon—no exceptions. You have to get out and do something during the day in order to not feel guilty about going out drinking that night.”

It’s always fun to play the game, “Do I feel blah because…?” This week’s candidates:

• I’m bored out of my mind and am slowly feeling my sanity slip away as I go deeper into my fourth month of unemployment?
• I’m coming down with something?
• My increasingly unbearable bed is causing me to sleep so poorly that I actually feel worse when I wake up?

I’m at least trying to do something about #1 and #3 – I decided to take a couple computer science classes in the fall at my friendly local community college to prevent my brain from turning completely to mush, and to do so online so I can keep going even if I do get a job.

I also decided it’s time to break down and crack into some super-on-ice-pretend-they-don’t-exist funds and get a new mattress, just to be able to get a decent night’s sleep for once.

I’m just going to have to cross my fingers it’s not #2.

The rather brilliant Hank Steuver, kicking off his hilarious review of new daytime talk show The Wendy Williams Show:

What should be on television in the middle of the day? What should fill the space between all those commercials for personal-injury attorneys, cures for urinary-tract infections and the promises of vo-tech schooling? Should anything be on? (Is “off” an option anymore, even in hospitals?)

All the available genres nearly died or migrated to niche networks — game shows, sitcom reruns, soaps, cooking demonstrations, local chatter. What programming remains will make you thank your lucky stars that you aren’t infirm or underemployed. The sound of a television turned on at high noon is the sound of utter human defeat. (The drone never ceases with the ads: bad credit, bad floors, bad living.)

As someone who is under-to-unemployed and on occasion turns on live TV in the middle of the day: Ye gods, is he ever right.

Recently, I have:

• Turned 28, to relatively little fanfare. Which is probably appropriate, because it’s not a terribly significant birthday. Drinks at the friendly local “We have a ton of awesome beer” establishment were fun, though.
   
• Found a surprisingly viable backup employment plan if I can’t get on anything for the fall season (which I’ll go into at some point later on if/when it happens). But the good news is that I am relatively confident that I will not be boiling my own shoes for dinner. At least not until after Thanksgiving.
   
• Had my phone deteriorate to the point where it’s going to take a lot of restraint for me to not smash the thing with a ballpeen hammer between now and next Friday when I get the new iPhone. Thankfully I have kept a dedicated phone replacement fund and have decided to say “Screw unemployment!” and just get the damn new one.
   
• Gotten new neighbors after 5 months of the apartment next door being empty because the landlord refused to face reality about the way rents are falling around here. They seem nice, but their cigarette smoke seeps into my apartment on occasion, and they let their cats roam about, which tends to freak Chaplin out in the middle of the night from time to time.
   
• Broke down and finally gotten myself the “Hooray, I lost 80lbs!” reward I’d been planning to get for months: An iPod shuffle/waterproof headset combo which will keep me entertained while swimming long distances. I’m now doing 2 miles with no problem, and I’m considering bumping up to 4km when I can get away with it.
   
• Watched an absolute fuckton of TV. Rewatched entire 4th season of BSG, now working through Netflix discs of Big Bang Theory (more geekily amusing than I recalled it being, since I dropped it after the pilot) and re-watching Band of Brothers, probably going to go through all of Deadwood next.
   
• Received a sternly worded letter from the landlord to the entire building that the toilets are ONLY for disposal of human waste and toilet paper. I’m not sure whether or not I want to hear the story behind that one.
   
• Have fought the good fight against my body’s natural instinct to stay awake ridiculously late and then get up mid-morning. Generally won, though this week I’ve mostly lost (as evidenced by the timestamp on this post).

I am a terrible cleaner. I keep my kitchen completely spotless because I spent some time living with people who let food fester and attract pests, but otherwise, my place generally veers between “hit by a tornado” and “aftermath of a car bomb.”

Having been unemployed and stuck at home long enough, however, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I feel like it ought to be addressed. And I’m getting pretty far down on the list of other projects that need to be done.

Hauling about four bags of crap to the trash and sticking another box in my car to go to Goodwill after just hitting the living room and bedroom at a moderate level today felt like progress. There are now several more square feet of visible floor than there were this morning.

The problem is, that’s just what I had to do to get the place clean enough that I would be comfortable actually having a cleaning professional come in and clean everything else. Sadly, I splurged on something else (that I’ll write about once it’s up and running), so my time vs. money ratio tells me it’s all on me to clean.

It’s a definite multi-day task. The bathroom alone is probably going to take me a goodly chunk of tomorrow, and there’s a filing nightmare that awaits me in about a year’s worth of paperwork that’s currently sitting in a gigantic pile on my chair, telling me that I need to switch more of my bills to e-bills.

But hey, it’s something to do. And when I’ve reached the point where I’m so bored that I’m resorting to cleaning to have something to do, it is officially time for me to get a job.