During climbing on Sunday I was hauled up a 5.10b, then attempted four clean 5.10a routes in a row (topping out on two, almost finishing the other two). Finished up on a 5.9. Then ached for two solid days. But it was a good ache.

Met Jan the realtor today. Things went well, although I am depressed to learn I will probably be looking at a townhouse or condo sort of dwelling. We will go looking at them on Saturday.

Work is going pretty well. When not distracted by bugs or other people’s projects (unfortunately this happens a lot) I have been making solid progress on improving PRMan’s occlusion buffer (this should have tangible performance benefits). There will be other cool projects over the next few months to keep me occupied.

Too bad the ugly credits issue has arisen again. The first draft of Nemo’s was posted without our names on it. They’ll apparently rectify the situation, but it is annoying that we have to specifically point this out to the Powers That Be. I don’t want to claim that my personal contribution as it directly relates to the movie is at all comparable to any animator or TD on staff, because frankly, it isn’t. I can’t point at any pixel and say “hey, I helped draw that”. Hell, I’ve barely seen any finished pixels or reels for that matter. On the other hand, I (and everyone else in Seattle) have had large or exclusive roles in improving and maintaining a significant chunk of software being used by the studio (and yes, this doesn’t just include PRMan, all of RAT is used now). Even more so now than in previous productions.

I just passed my fourth anniversary of starting work at Pixar. Ultimately it would be nice after that long to finally be able to point at a screen and say, “Hey, there goes my name. See, I really do work there. I don’t just fill coffee cups.”

I’ll stop carping. My birthday is coming up. Please feel free to buy me loot.