I started 2004 out waxing poetic on the end of the universe based on one of my many misconceptions about quantum mechanics. It only went downhill from there, except for where it wasn't.

January

My funding ran out, and I redoubled my efforts to get a job while finally getting around to doing the home repairs I'd wanted to do all along, so that someone else could enjoy it when they bought my house.

I officially took a one-year leave from NMSU, knowing that I'd probably not be coming back.

Failed to get a job with PSL because of some stupid dicking around, got lots of fruitless interviews at the NMSU job fair (as well as a couple of fruitful leads which ended up being fruitless in the end), and updated some of the logic in phpbb_integrate.

Music I made: Instrumental country remix using loops from blindmime's "Skin Disguise," Brown Boxes about my job situation.

Art I made: A couple of comics about Shooby.

February

I decided that I would almost certainly be going to Songfight Hot and Bothered in Austin. I didn't like The Grey Album when it first came out. trikuare.cx survived changing servers. "Sunny Day" got remixed a bunch.

Finally gave up on the concept of "independence" and moved back in with my parents.

Also implemented the first (whiny) version of my hotlink-preventing attribution-requiring stuff.

Music I made: The Frontalittle Squad — Goodbye Monster (my first Songfight win), Moscow, Idaho, Project - One.

Artwork: The 4800 Collection.

March

Got a temp job doing web development and systems programming for John B., a guy who really has his act together. As if. At least I learned a bunch of SQL and a lot about VoIP and telephony in general.

Got a new cellphone.

Music I made: Chucky (He's So Gay), and sweet sweet dissonant noise with Cosmic ReBop, a freejazz group. Started Project - Two, which still hasn't quite gotten off the ground.

Artwork: A bunch of comics about moving, freejazz, party conversations, and ephemeral New Mexico snow.

April

Got an interview (and immediate rejection) with Sandia Labs, and another one with Intel. At least Intel fed me well and put me up in a swanky hotel.

After only one week on the job with John, found out that he was the biggest, most raving lunatic I'd worked for since I worked for Dr. Joe Cecil of the Virtual Enterprise Engineering Laboratory at NMSU. First use of the μCecil unit of measure.

Got the new cellphone replaced with another cellphone which wasn't broken.

Music I made: meh. Well, I finally got an iPod, at least.

Artwork: Formed a yin-yang out of two kinds of horseradish and took a cameraphone picture.

May

Got into a minor cross-weblog argument about whether the Finder in OSX 10.3 could be improved or not. Finished selling my house back in Las Cruces and made a tidy profit on it. Discovered that the depths of John's asshole insanity went deeper than I could have ever imagined. Fortunately, the end was in sight.

Saw Good Bye Lenin! at a theatre just before it closed down unexpectedly. Almost got arrested at a rather wild party. Ordered a new PowerBook.

Music I made: Paper Cuts and Spilling Guts

Artwork I made: A half-assed (and summarily-rejected) Songfight album art

June

Totally redesigned my weblog to match the new name which was a result of Google pagerank whoring gone wrong.

Finally explained Dr. Cecil for the three of you who didn't religiously read my weblog back when it was on Kuro5hin.

By random chance, got an opportunity to interview with a bunch of cunts in New York City for a job I applied to on a lark and almost missed out on because the response ended up in my spam filter. I'm still not entirely sure if it would have been so bad.

Played DDR for the first time since leaving Las Cruces, and also enjoyed the hell out of Battle Programmer Shirase.

Managed to have the least-crappy birthday I'd had in like 10 years. It was still pretty crappy though.

Went to Austin. Played lots of music with long-time friends and enemies, and also recorded (and later mixed, mastered, encoded, and painstakingly tagged) about 12 hours of audio. Took some metaphorical karate lessons. Saw a couple college friends who I hadn't seen in a while, who went and got weird(er) on me in absentia.

Discovered that a casual acquaintence of mine died.

Visited Delphine on my way back from Austin.

Passed the programming test with flying colors, and got an interview in NYC.

Music: Didn't compose anything, but did that stuff in Austin. Wait, no, I also was part of the Elite Inner Echelon Blood-Circle, which was my second SongFight win.

Artwork: Lots and lots of Austin-related comics, and one SongFight album cover (my first to be accepted).

July

Somehow managed to get hired at the job in NYC, despite plenty of foreshadowing regarding personality- and work-lifestyle clashes.

Discovered how crappy hotels in NYC are, how expensive food in NYC is, and how difficult apartment-hunting can be.

Learned that some DigiPen graduates aren't very good programmers, and don't have a high opinion of other programmers who have been doing this stuff since they were, oh, 5 years old.

Found out that I'd never be seeing Shooby again.

In a laughable moment of foreshadowing, longed for when our crunch period would be over so that we would no longer have to do 10-hour workdays at a minimum.

Music I made: Five Minutes

Artwork: comics regarding my move, my job, the wonders of graph paper, and my loss of Shooby.

August

Moved into a converted knitting factory, and inadvertently got involved with the Jewish mafia.

Decided that even with the stress and bullshit, programming video games was a hell of a lot of fun and worth the stress.

Got a new device for which it would be a great injustice to call it simply a "monitor," akin to calling our great planet "a wet clump of dirt with stuff growing on it."

Had T-Mobile finally catch up with my tendency to exploit a loophole in their GPRS service to get free wireless Internet, just when I was working on a comic. This was beneficial, though, since otherwise the comic wouldn't have been as long, detailed, or soul-searching as it was. Finally pegged down my gender. (I think.)

Finished the game, repeatedly. Somehow managed to not kill James, repeatedly.

Had a brief desire to mail a sexual favor to Alton Brown.

Learned that our game wasn't exactly the innocent "conversation simulator" I was led to believe it was going to be.

Saw MC Frontalot again after seeing his musical. Finally met Raised By Wolves and Duncan.

Got to touch a Nintendo DS long before any of y'all.

Music: None.

Artwork: None posted, but a long comic worked on.

September

Finally got Internet service, repeatedly.

Finally posted the comic I'd drawn in a large part of August.

My loving hatred of my job intensified exponentially.

Dreamt about Shooby. Later dreamt about telepathically-vibrating bananas.

Got fed up with the Ericsson T610 and got an N-Gage, The Phone that Sucks Less(tm).

Got a minor rodent problem.

Music: None.

Artwork: A few comics and a non-haiku.

October

Truly burned out for the first time, until we suddenly got a lot of unexpected interest in the gaming press.

Ended the minor rodent problem.

Learned how the ESRB works.

Bought a new piano keyboard, and a new guitar amp. Still didn't actually do anything with them.

Treated myself to Katamari Damacy. Never looked at dung beetles in the same way again.

Wanted to hit James with a clue-by-four until he understood the meaning of the phrase "code freeze."

Got slightly intoxicated.

Music: Still nothing.

Artwork: A comic about getting slightly intoxicated, and a t-shirt inspired by the comic about getting slightly intoxicated.

November

Finally found some time to cook again.

Drew a bunch of comics.

Made some minor cosmetic tweaks to the forum, which would later be hacked in the first wave of what is currently the worst ongoing security issue on the Web, which we can't even blame Microsoft for.

Tried to get a job at my company for a couple of friends who (despite my protestations) still actually wanted to work there for some reason. Failed.

Discovered that computers exist solely to process HUMAN BEINGS.

Got a Roomba.

Got a trickle of early previews in the gaming press.

Went through a little surge of viewing organized patterns of black and white imprinted upon extruded sheets made of wood pulp. Went back to being a slackjawed weblog reader after a couple of days of almost-culture.

Discovered that today's entrepreneurs are totally raping the corpse of my grandfather who I never met.

Got a rather nice holiday bonus, which I still haven't had a chance to spend.

Had a nice diversion of rederiving the probabilistic form of Boolean algebra from first principles to show why it's pretty much unavoidable that you'd get apparent patterns in your iTunes playlist specifically because it's random.

Music: Still nothing.

Artwork: A few comics about walking home in the rain and the joys of Roomba ownership.

December

Entered the final stages of job-related burnout, which then led to even more rapid vacillations regarding the manic-depressive "my job sucks SO GOOD" feelings that entails.

Started flossing my teeth really well.

Got a second life, the result of which was meeting a talented programmer who is now hired to reduce the suck factors at work when I get back. Decided I really just wanted to work for Linden Lab, though.

Added one to my publications count, this time in the form of an actual shrink-wrapped cartridge-based video game! Which felt somewhat less satisfying than I'd hoped it would.

Discovered that James knows less than he thinks he knows in many disciplines. But damn can he sing Weezer.

Discovered that Jason is not, as I had previously thought, on my side.

Visited my parents. Got sick. Another vacation ruined. Meh. Had some pretty interesting dreams/hallucinations though.

Changed my weblog title yet again to reflect the whole RL-me/Internet-me duality, which is even further exacerbated by Second Life.

Applied for a graphics programming job with Linden Lab which was posted the same day that I resolved to apply for a graphics programming job there even if they didn't specifically post one.

Celebrated the new year by idling on Second Life and coughing up wads of phlegm while my parents fell asleep on the couch next to me.

Music I made: The Run Faster Multimix Project

Artwork: None, not even a comic. Unless you count my Second Life skins and screenshots thereof.

Hopefully 2005 will be better.