Pizzahut.com lets me order pizza with all the specific detail I can use over the phone, and then some. Right down to “half with pepperoni and sausage, half with ham and pineapple.” It lets me edit my order and see the price. For instance, I just found out that “stuffed crust” costs nothing extra, while “extra cheese” does. I can set a delivery or carryout time… I can SCHEDULE dinner, rather than just calling 45 minutes ahead (or 15 minutes ahead, for carryout).

Oh, and a very kind Schlocker (who shall remain nameless even though I named a 31st-century munitions company after him) provided me with a Pizza Hut Gift Card.

I’ll post again after I’ve eaten. I’m all about letting you people know how I like to Do Food.

–Howard

Wednesday morning at BrainShare I decided to experiment with the markers. Rather than beginning with pencil and ink, and then coloring line-art, I decided to just dive in with the markers.

Since I was coloring “freehand,” with no reference and no guidelines, I decided to do something that wouldn’t look ‘wrong’ if I screwed it up. That ruled out any of my characters, which was a good thing — I wanted to push myself OUT of the comfort zone. So I drew a dragon.

It came out okay…

The Toffa guys at BrainShare gave away a Sony PSP today at 4pm. I was there for the give-away, and had I been eligible, I would have walked away with the device.

The device, by the way, is really, really nifty. The graphics in the driving game I played for 5 minutes or so were amazing — this is NOT what handheld gaming has been for the last few years — not by a longshot. It seemed to me to be at least as realistic as Playstation graphics.

The Toffa guys imported the device from Japan, followed somebody’s instructions on getting it to display interface in English, and then gave it away here in the U.S… and the winner had only to answer a pretty simple tech-trivia question before anybody else did. The answer, by the way, was “SyncML,” and there was time enough before the answer was shouted out for me to turn to Chris and say “Okay, I know this one. Are you SURE I’m not eligible for the device?”

So yeah, I held, played, and helped* give away a Sony PSP today. Does any of that device’s inherent coolness transfer onto me?

–Howard

(*Note: by “helped” I mean “failed to interfere with.”)

I’ve never been diagnosed with any sort of anxiety disorder, or mood imbalance, or whatever you want to call the manic/depressive-ADHD-bipolar family of “issues.” I’ve always compensated well enough for my mood swings that there’s never been the need.

For the record, I’m STILL compensating well enough.

That said… I’m down now. Yesterday I was on the way down, and did an evening at BrainShare, which sucked the last of the mania out of me. This morning it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed after 9 hours of sleep. After a short errand run in the morning I was grumpy, depressed, and exhausted, so I took a two-hour nap.

Does this happen to everybody else, or is it just me? Last week was great — I was productive, and for lack of a better term I’ll say “manic.” This week I worry that I’ll struggle to stay awake, much less get everything done. Oh, I’ll prop myself up for my appearances at BrainShare just fine, but I have this sneaking suspicion that Thursday and Friday are going to get written off as a bad investment, or as “damaged in shipment,” or something like that.

This is one reason I keep a buffer.

–Howard