Minichan

My diagnoses:

This client seeks not pleasure, but safety and an escape from the burdens of existence. Any prospect that the client sees as potentially exhausting will result in a negative response. It is best to pitch this client toward the simplicity and ease of mind that comes with simple clarity of thought and the release of personal anxiety.

This client feels that times have come to a juncture that is requiring immediate action. This belief is often mistaken however and such an individual can react to perceived threats with overzealous behavior or assymetrical responses. This client will not heed advice, whether good or bad and will take his or her own guidance, even if it is only chosen as a means of asserting individuation.

Huh, so it's not for a game or anything like you were guessing? Cool story and nice follow up. Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Miss Puppy.

> MASSIVE five story building WITHOUT WINDOWS
> Their only concern was regarding the refresh rate of modern computers, which is how many times a processor redraws the monitor image…
Vision scientists and people who do psychophysics are often concerned with stuff like this and work out of windowless buildings...

(Edited 1 minute later.)

@previous (B)
No, it is a game!

> This client seeks stimulation in all its forms. Often a libertine or actively promiscuous, such a client desires to be seen as interesting by others. This is more important than seeming moral or trustworthy, and the client can often react negatively to offers of safety or appeals to common sense. Is very skilled at personal manipulation and can often control a conversation for personal gain. Best method of entry is to appeal to this client's sense of adventure.

> Self interest is the prime motivating force behind this individual, and compromise is not an option. Stubbornly insistent on his or her way in life, success is often seen as synonymous with self-worth.

I'm a psychopath then. Fantastic.

@previous (The Doctor !7MHPahvoGY)
It's not real.

Links in the email: A New Hope.

1.http://www.deathstargiftshop.com/?m=20080727

Aa! Turns out I was spelling their name with two ‘S’s instead of one, which explains the first few minutes of extreme confusion…

Generally speaking I dread new clients. The small ones are often unsure (and yet obsessive) micro-managers, who will take their uncertainty out on YOU, the hapless designer.

So I was surprised that this new gig seemed decent from the get-go —because they know exactly what they want. Because they are German SCIENTISTS, who work in a massive five story building WITHOUT WINDOWS, on the WEEKEND.
It would have been more dramatic if the place weren’t full of fuzzy cubicles and crappy office furniture from the ’80s. And actually they were Austrian and not German. The thin old lady with the accent that I met in the entryway made a joke when I told her that I liked Berlin. She said everyone thought Hitler was German when he was really Austrian, and yet Einstein was the other way around… or else the whole joke was the other way around. She seemed to think it was funny. This is why I love scientists.

I met with her and two others, and essentially I just need to recreate some visual test they administer so their company can repurpose it for the web. They projected some of it onto a screen from an ancient 16mm projector (Junior High school nostalgia) and I couldn’t tell if the test was especially creepy because it was so old, or because it was especially creepy. Which I like. I am pro-creepy. Seemed to be a series of ‘yes’ ‘no’ questions that don’t totally make sense.

Their only concern was regarding the refresh rate of modern computers, which is how many times a processor redraws the monitor image… all of which I told them I would have to go figure out. I just do pictures man.

Anyway, seems like decent money.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Whining, anxiety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

@84,133 (totoforhire !!Phkn/3Gic)
It is a game?

@84,135 (totoforhire !!Phkn/3Gic)
No, really?

Second link: http://www.deathstargiftshop.com/?m=20080807

Endless Tedium of Least Worst Scenarios
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
I finalized the job with these German scientists today… except that they’re not really German they’re Austrian, and they’re not really scientists, they’re doctors. Actually, these people are a bit annoying; my excitement has already waned. Maybe it’s because they’re medical doctors, but the men and women I met today have the personality of wine snobs, or the sort of people who used to work at record stores (back when there were record stores). At any rate, they were professional enough but I couldn’t help feeling that I was somehow inexplicably lacking in taste when I met with them this second time to get the details on this latest flash work.

Apparently they’ve been around for years and years as some sort of multinational research group. But only now are they realizing that they have to move into the digital age. I got the script and will come back with a quick proof of concept in a few days. Dr. [ Brarely?? ] (her accent made it sound like she had a mouthful of cheese), said it is ‘vitally’ important that I reproduce the experience of their crappy 16mm movie as closely as possible. I told her I could improve the image quality and she totally snapped: “You will do it exactly our way!” I don’t think she is used to people who talk back to her.

This is why doctors get on my nerves; they’re all trained to think they’re God…

Posted in Whining, anxiety | Tags: work | No Comments

@84,138 (B)
Yes! It's an alternate reality game. I just complete the new test and sent them an email at the address at the bottom to keep on testing.

Third link: http://www.deathstargiftshop.com/?m=20080814


Sweet Hellish Pain
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
The online beauty retailer account management pages that I have been working on for most of eternity have now received an official shrug of indifference from the brilliant, young boss of the company. This is amusing to me, because at this point the creative control has been taken away from four different people, me being none of the four. At this point in the design process, everyone who has fretfully micromanaged the process has had his or her decisions second-guessed at some point along the line, most finally the CD of the site, who went and redesigned the graphics that I created, making them apparently less desireable than they were originally. It was frustrating, but now it’s just amusing, because I no longer feel insecure about the process. Everyone has had their creative expression bitchslapped in a massive circle jerk of uncertainty. I, however, am working at home today. My life may be going nowhere at the moment, but at least I get to ride my bike at lunch.

Posted in anxiety, office | Tags: the office | No Comments »

The Unusual
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
After my work day was over, I headed to the Austrian Bunker where I met with my German doctors. I’m just going to call them German because that’s the accent they have. Actually there was an American guy there this time, whose name was Monroe and who, at some point in the conversation, let slip that he was a descendent of the president (and by president I mean President Monroe, the man who came up with the doctrine). He was just taking notes however, and seemed at least somewhat sympathetic when Dr. Pierley (rhymes with barely, as in ‘barely able to contain her anger’) started complaining about the demo I brought in.

Apparently I missed the whole point of the exercise, which was that the weird stroboscoping quality of the aging 16mm film was something she wanted to KEEP. She began a lecture about brainwave frequency, occular refresh rate, etc. and I stared at her with all the comprehension of a dog watching TV.

Obviously frustrated with me, she went and had a pow-wow with her Austrian brothers and I thought they were going to fire me, but instead they took me to a room and gave me the complete test in its appropriate environment… which I have to say was pretty cool.

The room was battleship grey and had ambient light sources (from somewhere), giving the whole thing a hazy, floating quality. The projector sound was masked by a low humming thing that one of the tech guys turned on, and then they sat me in front of the screen with a helmet on, that held my neck stiff and pointed constantly at the screen, with what seemed to be a laser directed into my right eye. I made a joke about going blind and Dr. Pierley assured me that it was not a laser but just highly collimated single wavelength light (which according to Google is the definition of a laser, so I think she was just fed up with me at this point).

I’d already read the entire thing for my demo, but now the questions seemed more unnerving. I had to answer “A” or “B” based on seemingly irrelevant questions about random shapes that appeared on screen. Later she told me the whole experience was designed to send the conscious mind into a kind of fugue state and that the strobing was the most important part of the process. My right eye started to throb and it bothers me still, 3 hours later. I got a splitting headache and really didn’t care if they fired me. But oddly, she seemed impressed by my responses. Not sure why, since it all appeared quite random. She said they’d test me more when I brought in the next iteration.

Before I left, one of the tech guys brought over a sheet of paper with specific frame rates and color flickering patterns that he said I should use in my flash. I felt weirdly calm and peaceful walking back to the car… as if I’d taken a xanax. But now I am going to see if I have any real Xanax in the house, because my head feels like it’s going to split in two.

How did it get so late?!

Posted in Whining, anxiety, office | No Comments »

Fourth link: http://www.deathstargiftshop.com/?m=20080818


sucker list
Monday, August 18th, 2008
It’s depressing to be so familiar with the ways of direct marketing. I have donated small amounts of money over the last few years to the Midnight Mission, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and the Nature Conservancy. Now I am on a liberal sucker list, and each of the above-mentioned non-profits along with a ton of others (Indian Orphans?) have sent me envelopes PACKED with heartstring-tugging CRAP to get me to pony up more money. Not only am I disgusted with the Nature Conservancy (which is apparently one of the better ones in terms of low overhead fees) but I have now virtually given up on donating money to any of them. A typical bi-monthly envelope is jammed with tree-destroying garbage such as personalized address labels, pleas to answer polls –the answers to which are meaningless because the polls are just devices to encourage a response — images of threatened and extreemly cute wildlife, personal pleas of poverty, stickers to put on my car, offers for a free stuffed animal if I pay more money, and various and assorted manipulative devices designed by well-paid professionals to wheedle their way into my checkbook. If they had just sent a simple, recycled plea for help, or a postcard, once or twice a year they’d still be getting my cash. I can’t be paying for more trees to be cut down so that more personalized address labels can be sent to more liberal suckers…

Posted in Whining | No Comments »

I test well…
Monday, August 18th, 2008
So these Austrian Doctors are the most anal retentive clients EVER. I mean they somehow spotted an RGB color that was off by 2 points (out of 255) in the red channel. The tech guy whose name I can never remember was watching on screen and he turned to Dr. Pierley and said, “needs a few percentage points red.” And she nodded to him as if she’d been thinking the same thing. This is why I call these people wine snobs.

But now every time I bring in a version to check out, the doctor gives me another test. It’s a bit like a mental massage; I definitely feel better after leaving… The light is still giving me massive headaches though; feels like it’s digging into my brain.

Posted in Whining, art | No Comments »

Fifth link: http://www.deathstargiftshop.com/?m=20080911

Cha-Ching…
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
A weird ending to a weird job. The Austrian Bunker Doctors were finally, finally happy with the flash thing I made for them (which if they weren’t so picky would have been done weeks ago). Dr. Pierley was actually complimentary; I overheard her describing me to one of the other doctors as very effective. She mentioned some new contract for vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I can only assume that means a lot of cash. I believe they were celebrating with a little party of some sort, or else it was someone’s birthday or something.

She gave me a check for my work, and began talking about a new series of tests that she might want to begin working on in a few weeks. But then I mentioned… Somehow it came up that I’d been writing this blog, and the woman instantly flipped back into her obsessive weirdo mode. She told me that this was all super confidential, they had proprietary algorithms, etc… Admittedly, I signed confidentiality papers, but it’s not breaking confidentiality to just say you worked somewhere, is it?!

I was a little hesitant to let her administer another test to me, given her annoyance, but the doctor was pretty insistent and ultimately I think getting back to her core competency (wiring people up to things) calmed the woman down. I’ve had issues with them over the last few weeks, but I believe they are legitimate doctors doing valuable work.

I suppose if I want more hours from these folks I should stop writing this thing. I don’t really have the energy to do much more, frankly.

Posted in Whining | No Comments »

@84,144 (totoforhire !!Phkn/3Gic)
Perfect! I use the Internet for that already.

Last link: http://www.deathstargiftshop.com/?m=200912


Voices
Sunday, December 20th, 2009
A barrier of consciousness wears away as sleep begins to dismantle the mind. Suddenly there are multiple, simultaneous monologs …and occasionally, hovering on the boundary of sleep, bits and pieces of that narrative are rescued and I find myself hearing my dead father’s voice.

If I were superstitious I’d believe in ghosts, but it’s more likely just a model of my father in my head. In the same sense, my wife can walk into a room while I’m reading, say something funny, then predict what I would say in response, to mock me. She knows exactly what words are rising unspoken in the back of my mind and says them before I do.

I imagine there are hundreds of these in constant operation within everyone. These agents would certainly predate the evolution of consciousness. An entity would need to evolve the ability to create such models as a means of efficiently predicting its environment.

Perhaps the brain of early man was an ever larger complex of small-scale agents, which became more complex as simple vocalizations grew into a language. But at some point there had to come a moment at which the model of that entity which was the self became the self that we think of when we say we are self-conscious.

And then the light of that illumination drowned out the other voices, pushing them back behind the wall of sleep, to creep out in dreams, or to filter their cacophony up through the levels of the brain in the form of intuition and prediction, or to reach through to conscious thought in a rare moment, when the self is preparing to rest, and our dead fathers reprimand us for some long forgotten, long forgiven fault.

This is what goes through my head as I lay awake with these splitting headaches. I think I’ve been staring too hard at the computer screen, as my right eye constantly aches. I am writing this from my computer in the living room, unable to sleep but not wanting to wake my wife.

On the brighter side of things, the Austrian doctor called this afternoon. Apparently her project is going well and they’re going to need more work. I must have been groggy because it actually took a while to remember who she was, and the woman has a very distinctive voice.

Posted in consciousness, science | Tags: evolution | No Comments »