As you may or may not know I was laid off last week. In some respects I was looking to this week. I figured I could catch up on some stuff like finishing my graphics gallery generator. I've been meaning to write a 'bot to dynamically generate the front page of my website. I still haven't finished my X 4.3 nvidia debian package either (with dynamic compiling of the glue layer.) It is easy to do my way but I want to use Debian's input mechanism so it obeys the prompt levels. Finally I wanted to actually put some graphics on the main site and nekoken.com so it isn't plain text like it has been since '95.

Unfortunately I didn't realize that looking for a job is just as much work as working. I have probably spent 10 to 12 hours per day finding interesting companies, researching them, and sending them custom cover letters with my resume. Today is the first day in a week that I've had a chance to kick back and relax a bit. I sent resumes to all of the intriguing companies I could think of that have jobs in my field. I did a phone interview this morning. So it is time to sit back for a couple of days and see what my efforts bring in.

That means this afternoon I actually turned on the television. After spinning through the channels once I settled on Cartoon Channel. Suprisingly their early afternoon lineup isn't bad. They seem to have grouped their blocks of shows together by potential audience or something. In the case of the Miguzi block it looks to have been a pretty good idea.

Each of the shows in the Miguzi block doesn't suck. Totally Spies is witty and amusing with huge potential for merchandising tie-ins. The one after that, Code something I can't remember isn't too bad either and displays a decent melding of CG and standard animation. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is reminiscent of the old cartoon but not quite as cheesy. Teen Titans' insane humor, complex non-sensical stories, and Puffy intro song make its quality obvious. All four of the shows have far superior animation and production values to most of the other animated crap on TV. I was beginning to think Cartoon Network was utterly worthless except for Futurama reruns.

Color me suprised that there are actual decent cartoons being made. With the likes of crap like Ed, Edd, 'n Eddy, Spongebob Squarepants, Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hungerforce, Harvey Birdman, and other half-assed shows with one frame of ugly animation per second I figured the only good animation was coming out of Japan. The shows I mentioned *may* be funny but they look like a single 4 year old does all the key frame animation, and they forgot to hire inbetweeners. Even Beavis and Butthead looks better than that garbage. Watching the Miguzi block put me in a suprisingly good mood and leaves me with a bit of hope for the future of American animation.