Prolefeed

Thoughts on Kindle & Ebooks

2010-05-24T04:21:00.006-06:00

I finally got an Amazon Kindle 2, and I'm loving it, but of course there are a few things that are not quite there yet. Some are vastly more superficial than others. Here's a copy of my letter to the feedback team. For the record, this is one of my favorite toys ever. I guess I'm just hard to please.

Form factor is slippery on the back, and doesn't always feel secure in my hands, particularly if they're greasy or sweaty for any reason. Some grooves or bumps would go a long way there.
I never realized how much abuse paperbacks can take until I got the Kindle. I frequently feel like it wouldn't survive in some scenarios that a book would, e.g. falling off a treadmill, or thrown into the back seat of a car.
The Next Page button on the right side of my kindle is loose, and has been since the first day I got it.
I'd like the ability to fold the kindle in half and put it in my pocket.
Many books (including professional ones) have typesetting or translation errors (especially with hyphens and page or chapter headers). I'll forgive that for $0.99 books, but not for $9.99 ones
The navigation is decent, but several tasks would benefit from direct keyboard shortcuts, without sending me through the (slow) tracking widget interface.
Dictionary support is really nice, except for two things. First, if it can't find a word, it should tell me immediately, instead of leaving me waiting and reporting nothing for the word at the cursor.
The dictionary lookup should be smart enough to infer the part of speech of a word from its usage (in many circumstances) and show me the definition for that part of speech first. Frequently, the most common definition for a word is the definition I already know.
The contrast ratio isn't quite as black & white as I wanted; I think the Sony reader has it beat on that point.
Unicode support is way behind, especially with Asian languages and mathematical fonts. I've got course notes and digital books that don't work (but should).
Reflow in PDF documents is a must. Currently, PDFs can't be resized intelligently on the device, and that's a drag for two-column journal articles and things.
Sample books are great, but once I've read my sample all the way through and bought the book itself, I have to sift through it to find my place. There's no synchronization with the end of the sample content in the newly purchased book. Am I doing that wrong?
The "sync to furthest page read" only works if I've been reading on more than one device, apparently. It's no help when I want to get back to where I was after jumping backward.
There should be a reverse search feature as well as a forward search.
Navigation is frequently painful, as the device doesn't take advantage of its keyboard for navigation. The web browser could associate hyperlinks with letters and numbers so I don't have to move the little widget around. Menu entries should also have hotkeys; I hate waiting for the screen refresh when navigating this way.
The busy/progress indicator could be implemented as an LED off-screen so that the screen doesn't have to continuously be updated during a download or other slow activity.
The size and position of the buttons isn't especially intuitive, or convenient for someone with big hands. It'd be nice to have a next page button available on the back and top of the unit.

If I buy a physical book from amazon and it doesn't yet have a kindle edition, send me the kindle version free (or at a steep discount) when it comes out
There's no reason I should have to buy whole books at once for $10; I'd like the option to pay a chapter at a time
A Netflix/XM pricing model: $x/month for y books "checked out" at a time. In many cases, I'd prefer to pay while I'm reading a book only, especially if I can't lend it to friends or sell it when I'm done with it anyway. In many ways a rental model makes more sense to me.
A pay-per-page model option would be nice. That way I'd never pay for a page I hadn't read.
The ability to sell, trade, or donate purchased Kindle books to other users
An option to trade in hard copies for a digital edition. Amazon could then resell the hard copies used.
I should get a discount on future editions of an ebook I've purchased in exchange for some of the rights I would've had with a physical book. (That is, if the kindle edition is mine forever, I would like a relationship with the author & publisher that keeps my book up to date)
I should be able to return a partially-read book for a prorated discount if I lose interest or am not satisfied
Prices for physical & ebooks should be broken down more transparently. Exactly how much of a physical book comes from (a) ownership in the physical sense, (b) materials, binding, shipping (i.e. the "dead tree tax"), and (c) the content itself. The price of a Kindle edition should just be (c) plus the cost of downloading it. There's a real opportunity to win over consumers alienated by Apple's DRM scheme.
Subscriptions to individual authors would be interesting. Consumers could help pay advances for popular, independent authors by pre-paying for the next book (or next chapter). Eventually a model like this could take publishers out of the picture entirely.
The pricing for blogs is exorbitant. I shouldn't have to pay for RSS distribution of free content. At the very least, give me the option of paying for the bandwidth instead.
From any page in any book, I should be able to access relevant comments and notes from other amazon readers online, social network style. Not that I'd want to; very often.
Audiobook tracks should be discounted for purchasers of the kindle edition. Basically there should be clear-cut and well defined ownership/readership rights to all the content.
I want an API

Finally, I found at least one sho' nuff bug:

In the book Glory Road, I tried to look up the word "wards" in several places, and each time the dictionary brought up the entry for "ocean".

Latest Addiction

2007-02-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

So ever since I found out about jyte on Wednesday or so, I've been intrigued by the simplicity of the system for keeping up with who said what and who agreed with them. There's also a "cred" feature, whereby users can enhance the credibility of other users (currently manifested in the radius of a purple dot).

There are several reasons this system appeals to me:

1.) I can post ideas that are too short for a blog:

2.) I can get stupid and/or brilliant ideas off my mind and let other people worry about the implementation:

3.) I can quickly gauge the state of public opinion, albeit in a small, skewed sample:

4.) It's a great demonstration of the potential of OpenID for social networks, prediction markets, and all that. You can make claims about other users (for good or ill):

So basically, I've staked my claim on some of the dumbest things said on the web in the last few days. More than anyone else in fact; the only users with nearly as many claims as me are the ones who launched the site in the first place.

Stupid Canadian Banks

2007-01-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

I guess you take certain risks in any gambling endeavor. Nowadays the problem tends to be that somebody twists the arm of your online payment processor, preventing you from taking your winnings and walking away.

What's lame is, even if I believe the legislation trying to curtail online gaming is intended to protect us, it's actually gonna cost me more to play now. Whereas online I can play entire tournaments for $5, now the minimum legal buy-in is usually $50 or more. Likewise, the smallest cash games are $2-$5 limit, which requires a bankroll out of my range to play profitably. Even with optimal strategy, you're gonna go broke without enough set aside to handle the swings, and I don't know how to build one without micro-stakes games, especially playing no limit.

I've got the skills to be a winning player, but they're buried under the miasma of confused strategies that've stuck from the dozen or so books I've read on the subject. It's the same problem I have with programming: I spend all my time trying to learn the latest trend or language, and never get around to writing any actual code. That, and the fact that every time I have a need for a program, sombeody has already written it.

I guess the world has enough poker players, programmers, and especially bloggers. I'll figure out something useful to do with myself one of these days.

I Stand Self-corrected

2006-10-31T21:36:00.000-07:00

I think I jinxed Blogger by bragging about google so much in the last post or two. Turns out it's been having a rough week, but I'm optimistic. I'll take the blame for jinxing them this time. Hopefully the effect will be limited.

They're in the process of making all their services communicate with each other, which, to most people, will elicit a loud yawn. It uses zend or something, which is like xxxml. That is, really, really, really, extensible markup language.

I get really excited about these interoperating initiatives because the code I'm paid to work with, sadly, is the total opposite. Think decades of urgent deadlines and no budget for documentation; a handful of developers and virtually no separate end users, and you can tell why I get jealous.

Thriller, even scarier.

2006-10-29T00:10:00.000-06:00

(If you don't see a youtube embedded video thingy, click here. I'm not sure the Facebook-imported version is up to the challenge yet.)

It starts off slow, but the chorus is priceless (~10 min. in). I haven't laughed that hard at legos since the Brick Testament.

Build a Beta Mousetrap...

2006-10-28T13:30:00.000-06:00

So apparently google has officially assimilated blogger.com, which means the first order of business is to make it into a beta version. It's interesting to see a label that originally was not involved with marketing become a mark of some distinction. Consumers seem to be more interested and trusting of beta versions than full releases, presumably largely due to the goodwill of the big G.

Rarely do you see these apologetic labels change connotation for the better. Terms such as pre-owned, and virtual, smart, and lite/diet/free have steadily declined in popular appeal (where popularity is defined by my extrapolation to other people's heads as I sit alone except for the company of my senile computers). That's not to say that marketers have given them up altogether. It's just that even the [whatever the opposite of savvy is] of consumers have wised up.

Beta, on the other hand, is a term originally used to describe a system or product that was only barely ready, or to apologize and disclaim any responsibility for its shortcomings. Funny thing is, the new standard for beta software is head and shoulders over similar programs that have been around for years. Google maps was in beta for the Silicon Vally equivalent of a metric eon. Gmail, which caused an immediate and frantic redesign of every other web-based email client, proudly displays its beta status, as if to say, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."

A less obvious but likely more fundamental shift is the realization on an institutional level that software is a service and not a product. Certain technical metaphysicists like your humble narrator have been screaming this at varying volumes for varying lengths of time. One powerful symptom is the shying away (by the smarter companies) of the "n.0" release strategy. AOL went from 4.0 to 11.0 in the span of a year without adding (arguably) any substantial value to their product. The idea was that if you saw your buddies using version 5.0 and you were stuck on 4.1.9, that you were missing out, and should pay to upgrade to the new product.

Unfortunately, that strategy puts incentives on companies to add features rather than improve the overall product quality (or to use an about-to-jump-the-proverbial-shark buzzword, the "user experience"). Naming names would be too easy, but the end result is fragmented versions of the software requiring either separate maintenance and support strategies for each version or the abandonment of users of the older version ("forced obsolescence").

What seems to be happening is that loyalty to software vendors doesn't run deep enough to support the chunky release-fix-EOL-rerelease model. Consumers, aside from the revered but routinely screwed early adopters, expect a product to work the first time they buy it, and don't enjoy paying to have initial defects fixed. Thinking of software as a product degrades one of its best advantages, i.e., its softness: if I can't count on what I buy today working six months from now, then I have better uses for my money.

The software-as-service approach, however, makes just about everybody happier, or at least more accountable. That doesn't mean I favor exclusive, long-term contracts with larger vendors. Businesses who bought into, say, Microsoft's enterprise licenses had to wait along with the rest of us for every delay in Longhorn/Vista. I'm no economist, but it would seem to me that the ROI would tend to drop when the investment doesn't return, for example, anything.

Anyway, back to the Greek letters. With very little marketing, google has risen from (or trickled down, depending on your perspective) from a favorite tool of geeks to the only serious game in town. Whereas ask.com has to put pathetic spots in prime time TV, google seems to be doing find by word of mouth.

The reason for this, I think, is that Google grew from a community of users, who were passionately interested in research and the organization, dissemination, and preservation of information. Several of their current and emerging services started as internal tools, so there was never any desire to cut corners. Improvements are constant, but rarely disruptive. Likewise, google advertisements are ubiquitous, but so non-intrusive (in most cases) that they aren't resented.

The difference, I guess, comes down to reputation. Plenty of the big vendors have made numerous promises that were filled too late or not at all. Google, on the other hand, consistently delivers, and continues to improve smoothly. Of course, it helps to have a network-centric software engine, where there's only one instance to worry about and no legacy constraints.

I'm going to stop writing now, and leave you with a new batch of Bushisms.

For Rich or for Poor, in Sickness and in Health, in Paper or in Plastic

2006-04-02T13:56:00.000-06:00

"You can reactivate your account at any time prior to your account expiring on 1/1/1900." Thanks, guys, now I feel even safer about my information security. Good thing it's only a dating site, so none of it's true in the first place.

I've been kinda sick this weekend, but I'm sure I know why. On Friday I signed up for a new life insurance policy, which of course won't take effect until I make the first payment. Naturally my State Farmer has been employing a voodoo doll to remind me of my own mortality. I've been effectively dead for the last 48 hours or so.

I would've fared better in the negotiations had I not been woefully outnumbered; my agent had his boss "sit in on" the process. I didn't realize that shopping for retirement plans would feel that much like buying a car, but I guess so. The guy made several arithmetical errors in describing things, not the least of which comparing a 30-year performance of his plan with a 3-month interval of mine.

The end result is that my hypothetical beneficiaries consider me better off dead, and the scary part is they could be anywhere.

Nothing much else is new, aside from seeing a woman in a wedding gown and her presumed groom (in full dress uniform, Air Force I think) killing time in Target yesterday. The official story was that they were there for the photos, which beats my original theory of having a reception in the Starbucks. I tried to get a crew together to pelt them with rice, and one of the stock boys was all for it, but had to ask his boss. "I like this job too much," was his excuse. Granted, he wasn't exactly CEO of the place, but, after considering the blonde co-worker he was paired with, I had to admit he had a point. The next level manager denied his request, and as I, being half dead, didn't feel up to assaulting a GI solo, let the opportunity pass. I guess I can make up for it at my brother's hitching, though. How much rice fits in a slingshot?

Why I Need a Shotgun

2006-02-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

So I'm installing the new version of Visual Studio. For those of you fortunate enough not to be familiar with this fine piece of software, suffice it to say that it is what puts together the lion's share of every other program on Windows, and is simply a joy to use.

So if you're gonna install the new version, you have to uninstall the old one first, right? That should be simple enough, using the uninstaller and junk. I went through the motions, removing .NET versions 1.1, 2.0, 2.0beta, J# somethingorother, and half a dozen other add-ons that might get in the way of the new one. Now it comes time to remove Visual Studio itself.

So I click in the clicking place, and all is well. This leads me to the setup wizard, shown below. I, being a dilligent user, again click where I'm told (remember i'm uninstalling now).

With me? Here's the fun part. Instead of launching the uninstaller, it sends me to the Copy Utility screen. Note how (a) I'm not copying anything now, (b) the Copy Utility is not part of Visual Studio, even in the most inclusive sense, (c) no trace of an uninstaller can be seen anywhere, and (d) there's really nothing I can do here.

Now, ordinarily I'm a forgiving enough user. You really have to be if you want to use any software from these people. What I don't get is how they expect me to purchase their new products if the uninstaller for the old version links me to a dialog box from another completely unrelated application, which never worked to begin with. Visual Studio is solely responsible, remember, for building/assembling/linking/compiling/otherwise tacking together probably 90% of the software being developed comercially for Windows. How is a poor developer supposed to work with a product that not only can't find its own uninstaller, but, instead of displaying an error to that effect, picks a component it has no business even seeing and launches it?

I guess I'll just put in the new CD and see what happens; maybe it'll miraculously remove the old one, or maybe it'll make things worse. A sane user would just reinstall windows on this poor old machine (if not put it out to pasture), but I'm past that point. It's survived three versions of Windows (not including service packs), and 4 of Linux, so I'm hoping I can do something constructive with it. It's too heavy to be a fly swatter, but it has potential as a paperweight, or even a nut cracker.

I can die now.

2006-01-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

Granted, the $1.20 I won won't cover much in the way of a funeral, but now I can retire from poker with the best of 'em.

Update: I did it again, on 23 March 2006, and never got around to uploading it.

Karina, Karina

2006-01-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Ever have one of those new years days where you meet two girls named Karina within 8 hours of each other, one from Russia by way of Israel, and the other from Romania by way of Cleveland? Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, I rang in the new year the cheap way, in the casino, so instead of paying to drink I got paid. It was a tour de force the whole way, and after starting at noon, I wasn't back up to even again until about ten, and finally ended the day up $100 one hour into 2006. I took Sunday off, but found my way back there on Monday and won an additional $177.50 in five hours.

I played another 380+ hands at Full Tilt yesterday, and ended up down $10. This isn't as bad as it sounds, since I had rotten cards most of the time, and stood a great chance of losing significantly more. I'll be happy to break even on days with bad luck, as long as I can get paid on the good days (like Monday).

The single worst play I've witnessed in my hold 'em career showed up last night. The flop was KKA, then another king showed up on the turn. I didn't follow the action to this point, but the bottom line is two people made it to the river, which was another K. So the board is four of a kind, kings, with an ace kicker. Just as a joke, the first player bet a dollar, and her opponent folded. I guess he was afraid of a fifth king, or maybe he thought she had three pocket aces.

2005.99

2005-12-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

Ugh, a whole month and a half with no posting. I should be fired. I know all of you have read every other blog on the internet and are on the edge of your proverbial seat awaiting the chance to read what I have to say next, and I intend to deliver.

Today I logged a whole two hours at work, of which I worked about one so far, and came home with a sinus headache and head cold. I've been advised to get plenty of rest and drink plenty of fluids, and I should be able to do at least one of those this weekend. I should read the sudafed box to see how much celebrating I need to do, and stay within about twice that amount on Saturday. I missed getting to Breck this weekend, but with 12 feet so far of snow, there should be plenty left even after the auld lang tourists.

CTTOI, I don't know the words to that god-awful song. Here they are, for anyone as morbidly interested as me. Also, there's an even aulder version, which is, IMHO, better. Cheers.

Long Time No Blog

2005-11-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Not too much new to report here. Work is going well, but all I can say about that is they pay me on time. I'm still not cleared enough to know what I'm doing, but as soon as I am, you'll be the last to know.

My sister, who went to Europe to study different cultures and learn about diversity, has reached the highlight of her trip by attending a traditional Spanish performance of los Backstreet Boys. Naturally, she finagled her way backstage, got to eat dinner with our second cousin once removed (practically a brother by Latin and Southern standards), and see the concert from the front row, all while speaking Spanish in a redneck accent.

My other sibling has outfoxed, or at least outdrawn, a deer 50% larger than himself (he's the one smiling, with the gun). His story is more straightforward, involving the deer being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and my brother in the right place at that same time, and pointing a rifle along the right vector at the right time and releasing a projectile at the right velocity at right time, resulting in the termination of the animal's primary functions (assuming that being eaten and mounted are secondary functions; reprioritization of the stag's functionality will of course require a revision of this description).

Anyway, here's the picture.

Anyway, poker is going strong; I won $30 taking third place on Saturday night in a 39-man tournament at Sticks. The game started at 7:30 and went until about 1:15. Basically the first two hours consisted of the suckers exchanging way too many chips with each other, the third hour was spent sorting out the results of that carnage, adn the final two in a dead heat between the last 5 or 6 of us. First place took $100 in tabs, and second $60, but I was happy.

I also won $60 playing online Saturday morning, then lost it on Sunday, but I was up for the weekend. I'm now switching sites, and working on rebuilding a bankroll.

I busted out midway through a tournament on Monday, then had a date Tuesday (a situation that has resolved itself, since the girl in question is now incommunicado), but my luck picked up last night, as I found myself on the good end of several bad beats. (Nothing beats flopping a set of nines when the preflop raiser flops a set of sixes, except flopping tens, jacks, queens, aces, a straight, flush, straight flush, or 4 of a kind, or a royal, or maybe catching any of the above on the river). Anyway, I dominated the final table until we were heads up, at which time my luck ran out. My opponent was playing pretty solid poker, so I was able to bluff a few times, but never had any real hands worth betting. This is of course an excuse, since when you're only against one person, anything worth calling is worth betting. Anyway, he ended up beating me slowly, although a more aggressive player would have been more interesting to be up against. He was tough to read, since he hadn't said a word in the whole time we were playing against him. As a rule, the loudest players tend to be the first ones out, but the most sorely missed. Worth keeping in mind, I guess, if I intend to get any better.

Anyway, it's Thursday again, but not a payday thursday. So I'm at the halfway point or something. I need to check my calendar to see if I get tomorrow off, but I'm thinking not, seeing as I'm not a veteran. Of course, all our money comes from the Pentagon, so you'd think we'd take military holidays off.

In the news, it turns out that Mr. Sulu has been crossing the Neutral Zone for the last 18 years. It's interesting that one of the first leading Asian characters in a major series, and one of the finest helmsmen in the fleet turns out to be a double minority. Maybe it'll be an inspiration for gay Trekkies everywhere, or at least an excuse for those who are technically straight but have never been within phaser range of a human female.

OK, so Tronie != Trekkie, but I couldn't resist. You should thank me for finding a cropped version of this photo; the lower half is not pretty.

The Trouble with Being a Shark

2005-10-24T09:07:00.000-06:00

is that it's always feeding time. I'm getting to be pretty deadly at hold 'em, but it remains to be seen who's going to be killed first. Time is already gone, and if anybody's money is next, it won't be mine if I have anything to say about it.

I invested in three books on the subject (as a way of justifying the expenditure, I told myself I'd be staying at home reading instead of hitting the casinos), and they've already paid for themselves. Just a few tweaks here and there have made me 30% more lethal. I trounced 32 people at Sticks on Saturday night, winning another $90 tab, making it $170 from that bar alone over the last two weeks. Then I went to a home game, but was late getting there, on account of one of the people I was carpooling with had to win the second tournament at Sticks. So I played pool with my designated driver for a while, and neither of us earned any bragging rights from those matches. We both see pool as a way to kill time between poker tournaments.

Anyway, it was well into the first tournament when we arrived, and they wouldn't let us buy in, so we had to wait another 90 minutes or so, and by the time the second round got going, everybody was too tired to play well. Several people went all-in way too early, but I wasn't in a position to profit on those hands, leaving me heads up with the guy whose house I was at, with him having a 7 to one chip lead against me. This was about 2:30 AM, and everybody was putting pressure on me to end the game quickly, and that put me on what they call "tilt," which means I lost focus. This was a winner-take-all match (although the first match ended in the first two places splitting the pot), and, not being the winner, I took none. But it was a good time anyway.

Then yesterday I had a huge lead at On the Rocks (almost 8 to 1 against the next highest stack), with 5 of us left in the tournament. Then I started talking to the blonde next to me, and the next thing I knew, I was the short stack. I can't complain, though.

On the ballroom front, I'm getting the hang of Lindy hop, and learning which girls aren't worth the trouble to dance with. Some mean girls hurt my feelings, though.

Things that Aren't Supposed to Happen

2005-10-11T16:48:00.000-06:00

After striking out (or maybe just another foul) with an effusive yet evasive Asian Studies and Biology major on Sunday, I drove home to find that the whole "Jack Frost likes to pick on the mountains" stereotype to have some degree of validity to it.

No Pain, No Shane

2005-10-07T11:47:00.000-06:00

So I've scaled back on the hold'em front, not because I'm tired or out of money, but because it occurrs to me that there may be more effective avenues for me to increase my unearned income. Such a great concept, that. Money for nothing; the chicks for free must come later, I guess...

Speaking of which, it turns out that Springs is a tricky place to meet women. There's no shortage of single girls, but the problem is that half the population is under the age of 3. The mothers tend to be anywhere from 16-22, so the trick is to find a girl that is both old enough to date me, and young enough not to be already way too involved with somebody else. I have no qualms about eliminating rival suitors through any means necessary, but I'm not such a jaded playa that I'll come between a man and his kid.

What else is new? Oh yeah, my landlord has been promoted to overlord, and is now in control of my eating, drinking, sleeping, and working out. It's good that somebody is up to the challenge; Shane's certainly more qualified than I am. I've had two workouts so far, and I'm usually dead by the end of the warmup. (The Olympic Training Center, mind you, is downhill from us). I'm gonna be so buff that I'll have to be careful not to step on all the dead vampires everywhere I go.

It officially went below freezing this morning. I wasn't happy with that; the least the city could've done was to consult me on it. By the time I was up and ready to go, though, it had risen to 38 or so, so I had no excuse not to come in to work. Next week, though, it looks like I'm going to have strep throat, so that's something to look forward to.

I'm still out of Zoloft, and while working out helps with the endorphin levels, which probably have a positive interaction with various feel-good neurotransmitters, I'm not sure I can get along without it for that much longer. It's a rush that's hard to describe; on the one hand, I feel more alive than I have in a long time, but then again, that's only a good thing if I like being alive to begin with. So I'm kinda breaking even.

Finally a Monopoly Everyone Can Love

2005-10-04T14:57:00.000-06:00

I'm starting to regret that I missed out on the Google IPO. I've been a loyal customer of theirs since before it was cool, and am increasingly impressed by the quality of their software and search offerings. It's only going to get better.

It's now becoming obvious that the Big G (no, not that one) has its sights set past the mere cataloging, digestion, and distribution of all of humanity's information. Now they're in position to be a leader in content creation, and I can't wait to see it happen.

I'm in the process of enslaving the half dozen or so email accounts I have to Gmail, which is so vastly superior in terms of usefulness and design elegance that I need not even bother going into it here. I'm waiting for a Google Calendar, which will let me publish (public) appointments from anywhere as well as singly add them from any website dealing with time-sensitive content (that is, everything from court summonses to TV shows). But that's only the half of it. Since it's not MS proprietary, it can be shared with anyone whom I trust to see it, and will probably allow different permissions for different times of day, different people, and common trust levels based on how well they know people I know well.

If this sounds like rambling, it's because I'm overwhelmed by the potential that the new Google/Sun deal brings to the office sphere. Finally, we'll have (for the very reasonable price of free) what MS Office has been trying to do for the better part of a decade: seamless interaction with other users, the internet, etc. Massively distributed editing, immediate publication, and, of course, the ability to search every sentence ever written by anyone from now on.

Now, of course, privacy advocates will whine about how, if they could only go on using typewriters, no one would be able to see what they were up to. Certainly there will be at least as many concerns as there are over the gmail searching (I for one support it as long as it's done in a way that benefits me, rather than overwhelms me with useless information. Google is currently the only entity I trust to limit itself to reasonable profitable usage of my information, and I would much rather see them as a leader in how to do it right than have them cringe under privacy advocates' sensibilities).

I think what the privacy people fear most is that no one cares what they think they know or have to say. Most of history's greatest thinkers were among its most open (and thus vulnerable) people; you almost have to pity the people who hide from this kind of information.

In any event, the infomation age is upon us. While some will say that it's been here for at least ten years, I'm going to mark the launch of google SMS as something of a turning point. Now, any moron with a cell phone, a thumb, and a dime can access any text information they need from the most reliable source of all things reliable. That's not even touching the potential of real-time google map-based navigation devices, or linux-based, $100 laptops running nothing but Firefox with a few choice extensions capable of blowing away office & windows-based systems. We're way past the point where new features in office are of use to most people; every new capability they tack on serves to cover up three that were almost debugged to begin with.

I'm more than a little perturbed by some publishers' reaction to the Google Print project, which aims to scan every book ever published and make exerpts and ISBN information available online. It has the potential to save thousands of out-of-print (such a quaint expression) titles from obscurity, and make billions of dollars for copyright holders of unpopular books. I don't remember which site I read this on, but one publisher, when asked why Google's generous offer to leave out any publisher who wanted to opt out (despite a more than legitamate fair use claim) said something along the lines of, "We have no idea what books we may have published or have a legitimate claim on." So, at present, they stand to make all of no money from those works, whereas, with cheap print-on-demand and ebook readers in every cell phone and PDA (except mine), they stand to be dripping in caviar. People like that need to be expunged from the planet for the good of humanity; if you stand in the way of education, especially when it's on the verge of being universally, freely, globally, and instantaneously available, I have no use for you.

I won't speculate on the future of Google Video, which looks like it may have further to go, but I'd keep an eye on it if I were you. All they need to do is cross-reference scripts with TV shows, put bookmarks corresponding with keypoints in the script (or better yet, allow users to do it for them), and basically all of television and film can be indexed and catagorized as easily as print news is today.

Information wants to be free. I want to be free. I want to be informed. I also want to have as much distance as possible between me and those that don't. Unless they're playing poker.

Don't Ask

2005-10-03T10:29:00.000-06:00

On the Effects of Zoloft Withdrawl on Poker, Dancing

2005-09-27T16:58:00.000-06:00

I'd forgotten just how much more personality I have when I'm not medicated. Maybe personality isn't the right word, but anyway, those of you who have known me on and off the stuff will catch my drift, or not.

As it turns out, the SSRIs tend to chop both the highs and lows off my experiences, so when I'm on the stuff, I don't feel bad as easily, but I don't have as much fun. (Still bipolar, but with a shorter pole). Anyway, I ran out of it on Friday, but still managed to have an interesting weekend.

Friday night I played (guess...) poker at a the kickoff tournament at Tam O' Shanter (which we decided was Irish for bucket o' chicken wing bones). It wasn't pretty. Not only did I lose in a depressingly unspectacular fashion, I had a dinner/bar tab of like $25 before the tip. At this point I decided that I couldn't afford to play for free anymore.

So, naturally, I went back to the Midnight Rose on Saturday to reclaim the money I lost last week. I bought in for $50, won my way up to $115, lost my way back to $51, and decided it was time to go home. I haven't decided how to spend my dollar yet, but I'm working on it.

It seems like the trick is to leave before I start losing. That's the second week in a row I've doubled my money in five hours and then nosedived (nosedove?). A player sitting next to me said that she'd never seen anyone leave that table with more than $100, which I can believe, although I'm convinced it can be done. All in all, I spent nine hours there earning my dollar, but if I'd left after doubling up (or at least switched tables) I'd be much better off. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday, though.

Then Sunday I lost at On the Rocks, then went to Fat Jack's and won 3rd, for a $10 bar tab. Last night I went back to On the Rocks for another Benchmark tournament, and won second, which is my best so far in that league. That was worth another $15, but that's only because On the Rocks has the lamest prizes. The cool thing was that I got about another 600 points for my trouble, which should take me from 29th to about 19th in the league. The top 132 players make the semifinals, so I'm probably safe for now as far as that league is concerned. It was an awesome game, especially for the winner, who came back from a thousand chips and won all $50,000 of them. I lost on pocket Aces (again) on the hand before I'd have had to go all-in blind. I had about $7000 at stake, and he was sitting behind the other $43000, so he called me with his 7-3 off-suit. The jerk had the nerve to turn that hand into trip 7's, but I can't fault him for that.

I've negotiated a workout regimen with my landlord/roommate/personal trainer/nutritionist, so it looks like I'm gonna be in a world of hurt for a while, but in a good way. That should help with the seratonin and dopamine levels.

In between poker and poker, I had a ball dancing. It seems like the devil's showroom for Faustian bargains over there. Maybe that's just because the pickings are somewhat slim on the poker front; the only way to get one of the pretty girls is to win her off her boyfriend.

I'm feeling unpatriotic having not served even one measly tour in Iraq, and get another pang of guilt every time I take chips from another veteran. It looks like the Iraq alums are readjusting better than the Vietnam vets, although my sample space is of course limited. I got to listen to a heated discussion on whether it was hotter in Falluja or Al-Asad, but in any case, at 120 F +, it's easy to understand why so many of them are eager to come home to Colorado.

On the skirt-chasing front I seem to have moved beyond getting fake numbers; now they're giving names that just don't seem to add up. I've met a girl named Jerica, one named Spider, a Gloriana, and one named Teen (I even had her spell it for me).

Anyway, I'm keeping busy, so that's something. I've gotta go put air in my bicycle tires, but I remembered that my roomie has a compressor, so that should make short work of it.

Nothing Says Tornado Safety Like a Double-wide

2005-09-23T14:10:00.000-06:00

It must come as a great relief to the evacuees to know that, after seeing their cities obliterated by a Hurculean hurricane that they're getting an all-expenses-paid ticket to live in the largest trailer park ever conceived. Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I wonder if it'd be cheaper for the government to simply draft everybody that stays behind. Since they declared martial law in New Orleans, technically the military is in charge. Anyone who thinks he or she is tough enough to stay behind should be put to work immediately cleaning up wreckage on the GI Bill, or shipped off to somewhere where tough people are needed. I'm still waiting to hear about somebody looking back and turning into a pillar of salt.

The best solution I can think of is to let New Orleans flood again, then pour a megaton of cement mix into the water. Presto, instant land reclamation.

I've Discovered How to Fix Social Security.

2005-09-19T09:19:00.000-06:00

All you have to do is forbid anyone over 55 from entering a casino.

I guess I should back up a little bit. I took Wednesday off from playing poker, and then made an unspectacular showing on Thursday night at Sticks. On Friday, though, I took third place, which was worth $15 in food and stuff (woohoo), and not a moment too soon, b/c I'd spent all of the $60 I won there two weeks before.

On Saturday, the weather was gorgeous, so I went to check out Garden of the Gods park. There were really big rocks, as promised, and I had a great time driving through there, and even hiked a little bit (maybe a half a mile total; the rocks weren't close enough together to provide any shade). Then, it being so pretty and all, I went for a drive.

You're not going to believe this, but somehow I ended up at a Casino. Ok, so you'll probably believe that part, but the serendipity of the thing was uncanny. I was just cruising along these mountain roads, taking in the sun and wind and big rocks, and enjoying the absense of traffic, when I saw the sign for Cripple Creek (no relation to the crippled tribe of the same name). I recollected that there was an establishment there that claimed to have poker tables, and, seeing as how I'd been a good sixteen hours without playing, thought I'd stop by.

Sure enough, at about 9800 feet, right next to the DalaiLama's summer home, there's a whole mini-vegas thing. Whodathunk?

Anyway, I found the place I was looking for, called the Midnight Rose (not a rose in the place, by the way, especially by Pasadena standards). I was duly shown to the Poker Room, and allowed to purchase chips. This was a new thrill for me, but, what the hey. You've got to speculate in order to accumulate. I put up a sum that was modest by their standards, and played at the cheapest table.

Ten hours later, I had lost 75% of my initial buy-in, won it back and risen to 200%, then lost that, slowly and excrutiatingly. While not strictly profitable, at least I was losing much slower than the other people at the table. The game was limited, as opposed to no-limit, hold 'em, so that was an adjustment. Plus, nobody ever busted out and left, or the few who did were quickly replaced. The blind stayed the same all day, and the food and drinks were free...all in all, it's a setup I could get used to.

Anyway, it turns out I was probably the youngest person at the table, and I haven't felt so much animosity to previous generations since...well since the last time I thought about 20th century history, or any of the history before that. But this was the first time I'd ever thought about punching a guy on a respirator (so smug, making his Darth Vader sounds, with enough chips in front of him to call anything).

It's not that the people were beating me by playing well; they just played every hand without regard to the value of their cards, hoping to catch all kinds of unlikely hands. Granted, I made a couple of stupid calls (usually involving holding two pair and going up against somebody with a flush draw), but I watched old people pay out money faster than an ATM in Times Square.

The trouble with the table was, they were just good enough to know not to beat me, but bad enough to lose to everybody else. I'm good at knowing when to fold, and in fact yesterday I won second place (and a $10 tab) by doing just that (in the whole tournament I didn't pay for one river card without wining the pot, and only invested in two turn cards before having to fold). I'm not as good at bluffing, especially against people whose sensitivity to losing money is nonexistant and in a limit game. I would've gladly left when I was up, but I wasn't in a condition to drive, so I stayed put and watched my luck, and my money, run out.

Anyway, I figure I only lost about six dollars an hour, and was well taken care of the whole time, so it was a good trip. Most people I've talked to said it was a heck of a roll for $60, especially since it was my first (and last, if I know what's good for me) casino venture.

Irreplaceable

2005-09-14T10:20:00.000-06:00

I guess it speaks to my misanthropic tendencies to admit that the closest I've come to crying in the (I'm drawing a blank trying to come up with a less over-used word than "wake", "aftermath", or "devastation") of Katrina is in reading about the loss of decades of research data and thousands of laboratory animals. I realize of course that everything they were working on can be restarted, although some of the studies involved covered decades, and that the people lost can't be restarted as easily. Maybe I can appreciate data loss more because I'm closer to information than I am to people, or maybe it's just that the loss is easier for me to wrap my mind around than the human cost.

I've tried to refrain from joining in the pundit-party surrounding this Kat 5 deal, but one more of us isn't going to hurt. I'm getting tired of hearing about how long the response of FEMA took, because frankly it's just a smokescreen preventing people from asking the hard questions. Yes, the federal help could have come faster; yes, red tape prevents numerous obvious things from being done; yes, FEMA is run by people who are even less qualified to lead than the Bush administration itself; naturally the gross incompetence and terrifying inefficiency that characterizes practically everything the Department of Homeland Security stands for was laid naked for even the most obtuse observers to see. However, in my humble (yeah, right) opinion, none of these things are central to the problem at hand.

What I'm angry about is not the timeliness or organization of the reaction; it's the total lack of foresight at all levels of government for what happened to New Orleans. Everyone had access to the obvious information that (1) the city was below sea level and sinking, (2) the levee system was not designed to handle greater than a moderate hurricane-level storm surge, (3) the only evacuation routes from the city were likely to be severely disrupted, and (4) in the best case evacuation scenario, thousands of people would, for a variety of good and dubious reasons, fail to get out of harm's way. The problem was that few people in power (and I use the term loosely here, as the distribution of discretionary authority in this country is one of the Constitutional and bureaucratic quirks we live with) acted proactively on this information.

Granted, before 9/11, the general public was blissfully unaware of the vulnerability of our urban centers and the fragility of our infrastructure. Now, after sacrificing billions of dollars, and priceless Constitutional liberties, we're no better off than we were before. If we can't handle one little storm with 72 hours' advanced notice, imagine what would've happened if some Al Qaeda operative had invested a couple of thousand dollars in pipe bombs and set it off at the bases of one of the levees. It's not a pleasant picture, but after the last couple of weeks, it's one we can at least begin to fathom.

Of course, they wouldn't stop at just one city's worth. It would much more likely be a simultaneous attack in six or eight places, each calculated to cripple the first responders' ability to respond first. It's taken us two weeks to get a handle on this (local) crisis, using every possible response mechanism from all over the country. Imagine if a series of attacks of this (moderate) scale were coupled with explosions on a few critical interstate cloverleaves, knocking out Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, etc. If you think the Katrina response was a debacle, you'd best think again.

I'm not even going to bother pointing out that if anything even quasi-atomic had gotten loose, we'd have the problem of quarantining a city of half a million people. If everyone is irradiated, there's no herding them into stadiums or sheltering them in other parts of the country. We would've had to station armed guards everywhere to shoot all Cajuns on sight. I'm wondering what the trillions of dollars spent on Cold War preparedness bought us in terms of our ability to clean up a real mess.

Wanted: New Hobby

2005-09-11T13:22:00.000-06:00

So I've been pretty negligent on the punditry front for like a week and a half, and there's no excuse for that in my case, as I'm rarely more than a few feet from access to the internet, and you the reader. The main reason for this is a nine-day poker binge, during which I played somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 tournaments. I managed to win a $60 gift certificate at one venue, plus a few other small prizes.

In the Benchmark Gaming league, I'm currently 24th in the city out of 687, although the bottom hundred and fifty or so of those haven't played. It took them forever to update the stats, and I might have had a higher rank earlier in the week if they'd updated it quickly enough. The restaurant and bar trips required for this pursuit would really add up if I weren't already doing that.

Tonight I'm in the finals at On the Rocks' in-house tournament (played without the aid of Benchmark). Should be fun, but I have a feeling I'm going to need help against all of the better betters. Cards are the best way to win, although plenty of players use other techniques half the time. I'm guessing they won't get away with any of that tonight. I'm brushing up on my probability, but I'm still gonna have a tough time coming out on top. Last year my roommate won a t-shirt, so that's something to aspire to.

52 Card Pickup

2005-09-02T14:15:00.000-06:00

I wouldn't have thought this to begin with, but there are more single women playing poker than there are swing dancing, it seems like. Maybe it's just that the poker players are easier to talk to, or that women are less comfortable dancing alone. Then again, I haven't been keeping the most accurate statistics.

Speaking of statistics, you can now check my ranking in one of the local poker leagues at benchmarkgaming.com. I won another turbo tournament last night, and might have fared better in the main tournament if I'd had a seat at the start of the round, but I didn't, on account of a clerical mishap, so I had to play as an alternate, entering after the blinds had already been raised twice. That's really just an excuse, though. Anyway, it doesn't look like they've finished updating the stats from last night's games. This season the total prize money for the whole thing is like $2000 (all the tournaments are free; the money comes from the restaurants), and first place takes home $600+ of that.

That reminds me; I need to fill out my 401(k). Not as much fun as Poker, but a more respectable kind of gambling I guess.

Oh, and I also got four of a kind yesterday, which gets you free stuff if you play at On the Rocks, but since I was playing at Hooters, I just got kudos. On yet another side note, one of the waitresses had just moved here from Dothan, Alabama. I didn't even know they had a Hooters down there, but since I left that town at age 7 I probably wouldn't have noticed if they did.

A Lady Doesn't Wander All Over the Room

2005-08-30T07:34:00.000-06:00

and then blow on some other guys, er, cards.

By Frankie's definition, I think I've met a lady, insofar as she is Luck incarnate, carnality notwithstanding.

The story goes like this: I'm playing hold 'em, getting no love from the dealer (some might go so far as to call him a flip-flopper, but your faithful chronicler is above such low-brow wordplay). Anyway, I busted out of the main Monday night tournament without even making the top 15, after a series of lackluster hands (or at least some hack-hustler betting). I can't say that I blame Fortune, since she was right there all the time, I just wasn't reading her signals correctly.

Which is understandable, or at least should be. Sending mixed signals is the Fates' stock-in-trade; it's sorting through the noise that makes a gambler (or suitor) successful. The form in which She revealed herself last night was particularly well suited (no, that wasn't a card pun) to such tactics, and not above capitalizing on it. By all accounts she placed the establishment in danger of running out of alcohol altogether, and I'm not sure she paid for her own drinks once.

If you're wondering what this has to do with poker, I'm getting there (poker, I just met her! (ok, that one was)). During the second tournament (called Turbo, since the blinds go up every time you blink), the Lady was in full force. Now, no one said She could aim. Indeed, in the first hand, five players out of eleven went all in before the flop. I guess I'm not the only one easily enamoured. Fortunately for me, I wasn't among them, as the winner had a big slick of diamonds, which took a flush, knocking out a Siegfried & Roy, a Barbara Feldon, another set of Hilton Sisters, and an a Jack-queen or something). I didn't win those chips to begin with, since I didn't play that hand, but I got them in the end.

After waiting patiently all night, Luck came and sat down next to me, and explained that I should buy her a shot. Although in flagrant violation of the beer-before-liquor-never-been-sicker rule, she seemed willing to take her chances along with my money. While she was negotiating with me thus, my cards seemed to be FedExed from Mt. Olympus or something, because I couldn't lose. In the span of five hands, I had gone from fourth place to second, and won it in another two. I wish I could narrate all the ins and outs of how I did it (for the readers' benefit and my own) but I can't for the life of me remember any of it. This Fate might have been part Siren, part Medusa, but more power to her; she got me more face cards in ten minutes than I'd seen in two weeks.

Anyway, I agreed to her proposal, and told her to put whatever she wanted on my tab. (Note: I'm not a sucker in general, but the way I figure it, by being way too single for way too long, I've missed out on buying things for pretty girls, which means I have too much money to spend on junk at places like Old Navy and Del Taco, so really, it was an investment...right).

Who'dathunk you could hold fifteen dollars' worth of suds in a shot glass?

I don't care, I won, and I can always make more money doing things that aren't nearly as enjoyable as playing poker. It doesn't look like dancing is one of them in my case though, as I found yet another way to cause excrutiating pain inadvertantly.

I finally got the cute bartender to dance with me (she was off-duty), and we were doing fairly well, a swing to "Friends in Low Places (hopefully not new orleans)". Anyway, she hits her foot on the leg of a table and just about cries, which doesn't really add up; bartenders tend to have pretty strong feet, it being in the job description. Turns out she had a brand-new tattoo on that foot, and she wasn't even wearing a sock (presumably so she could show it off). Just goes to show ya, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

// Post-Katrina Update
For those of you not lucky enough to be sitting at around 7000 feet, well above the hurricane's level, you're probably thinking that the tone of this article could stand some improvement. Then again, if you're lucky enough to have power to read this, then you could do a whole lot worse. I thought about delaying the publication of this one, but then again, it seems ironically appropriate that I wrote about the fickleness of Luck on the day before she sacked a dozen or more floating casinos.

I was just about to suggest over at HalfBakery that they make the next round of riverboat casinos be aboard submarines, then figured some other nut would've already thought of that, and I was right. Interestingly enough, the Kentucky legislature had an idea in that same vein, but for a different purpose altogether.

Back to the Drawing Board, I Guess

2005-08-23T07:49:00.000-06:00

I just noticed that one of what was formerly the top dog of websites online, aol.com, is now sporting a Beta Mode disclaimer on its main page. That's right, the service known for going from version 4.0 to 10.0 without adding any notable features, or, indeed, fixing any flaws, has humbled itself to the point of AOL Beta. Somebody should tell the marketing department that "beta," as it relates to software, is generally Not A Good Thing (with one very notable exception).

I'm back at work now, hacking away at code that's older than I am. I don't think Da Vinci was involved in it, because so far everything has been much more cryptic than the book. I'm walking a fine line of improving things and not hurting the feelings of my predecessor/supervisor, who are one person in my case.

Anyway, I played the most unremarkable three hands of poker last night. I only went because it was at On the Rocks, which is a much nicer place to play than over at Sticks, even if the prizes aren't as big. For one thing, the ventilation is better, and since the tables are so nice, people can't have their cigs over the felt, which means we can all breathe a little easier (sorry, it's early).

I'm liking Verizon so far. I even managed to sweet-talk the lady at tech support to authorizing use of my employee discount at a retail location here to pick up an accessory, out the stock of which they were. Not bad for a faceless megacorporation.

Well, almost faceless.

Upswing Downtown

2005-08-22T11:27:00.000-06:00

Thanks to a much-needed tip from my boss, I am now in contact with actual swing dancers in Colorado Springs. Turns out they rent out the dance floor of a VFW (of which it turns out this town has more than most, and of which only one hosts swing dancing). They had a crowd of maybe 50 people, thirty of them women, and the average age was probably 25. Which means I'm going back. I made it through about twenty girls before one of them turned me down for a dance. Of course there was the one jerk couple who wouldn't ever change partners with anyone else, but it's their loss, since they won't learn a fraction as much from each other as from the room at large.

They're actually having an aerial clinic next week, but the ceilings at the VFW are only eight feet high, which doesn't leave much room for showing off. The other really exciting thing was that they had probably the best swing DJ I've ever seen there. All of the tracks but like two were recordings I hadn't heard before, and if there's one complaint I had about Samford, it was the lack of any attempt at musical diversity.

On the poker front, things are pretty consistently underwhelming. I've about determined that game has more to do with dumb luck and ego battles than actual math. When you find out that the strategy has pretty much already been solved, it takes some of the fun out of the game. I won third yesterday, busted out early Saturday night (with a full house - queens over kings - no less), played poorly Friday, but won a free drink as a door prize, did mediocre on Thursday, and got third or fourth on Tuesday. I think that brings us back to Monday night, when I had second, and lost to the bartender. It's kinda fishy when the bartender wins a free tab; what's she gonna do, tip herself?

I'm all settled into my room now, and it looks like I'll just make it to Thursday, which is payday (observed). That probably makes my creditors happier than it makes me, but what the hey. All I've got left to buy is dancing shoes, a card counter, and a TiVo, and I'm home free. I've got all the computers I can stand at work, and buying a PDA wouldn't help much, as I'm not exactly mobile, and when I am, I don't wanna think about work.

Anyway, speaking of not thinking about work, my lunch hour is almost over, so I'd better get back to it. Ciao.

So Productive I'm Practically Useless

2005-08-19T13:30:00.000-06:00

Well the saga with the furniture continues unabated. I've got some pictures to upload as soon as I get back to my home computer. The predicament with the couch has to be seen to be believed.

In the meantime, I got some sheets, pillowcases, and a comforter from Target. I ended up going with bright red sheets and a khaki comforter, which, coincidentally, matches my car. All I need now is the Honda logo embroidered onto it.

I slept the last two nights on the mattress, even though it's not installed into my room yet. It looks like roommate #2 is going to have to go to work on the window in my room to create an escape path for the couch. If it were up to me, I'd dismantle (read: obliterate) the thing, but it's not my couch, even if I did rent the space out from under it.

I played some more Holdem last night at Sticks, but only got fourth place out of 20. They gave prizes to the top three, naturally. I might've had more fun if I'd enjoyed the players' personalities, or if they'd had any. Really only one other guy looked like he was enjoying himself, and there were no women this time. At least they have two more games tonight I can choose from.

I'm supposed to be learning Visual Studio 2003 .NET over the weekend, which is not so much hard as it is mind-numbingly complicated. Imagine everything you hate about Windows, double that, and then take out the good parts. Maybe I'm being a little harsh, but I guess I just feel bad for selling out.

Anyway, I've been having fun with several new (for me) Firefox extensions. I've got one now that automatically generates random passwords and remembers form information and passwords for all the sites I go to. I've got it running off a USB stick, and it's secure, as long as I don't release the master password. I won't use it in the classified room, of course, since USB drives are forbidden there. That and the internet itself.

Well, I'd better get back to work. Those missiles aren't going to blow themselves up (I hope).

Texas Fold 'Em Already

2005-08-16T12:50:00.000-06:00

Well they say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I'm working on that step at the moment with regard to playing poker. I've played five games already this week, came in third Sunday afternoon, twelfth Sunday night, then like fifth in a little "turbo" round, then busted out last night at the seven o'clock game (lost 4000 chips with 3 kings; it happens), but finally got second place at 12:30 this morning at a different place.

I'm not playing with actual money, but there are prizes for winning, including free food, beverages, and pool, not to mention all the glory. One kid in particular has been infuriating me, as he beat me twice on Sunday. I played him again last night, but he busted out early on a hand I had folded on, so I didn't get much satisfaction that way. He's up to $300 in free stuff that he's won playing around town, and wants to play in the Denver Poker Tour for $50,000. I'm not at that level yet, but it wouldn't hurt to have that kind of cash at my disposal.

I did a ton of shopping this weekend, and now I'm the owner of a sho-nuff queen-sized bed, dresser, and matching end table. I still have the problem of cajoling my roommate with the pickup truck to help me move it, not to mention actually getting the stuff in the room. I think I'll make getting it home my goal for today, and if I have to take a poker break, so be it.

One thing I have going for me in poker is the fact that very few people can figure out what I'm thinking at any given time, even if I try to explain it to them. Poker is one of the very few avenues where this inability to communicate to people is an asset. I tend to play excellently when there are six or more players, but when it gets down to three or four, I have trouble knowing when to bluff. My thinking is that bluffing is an unreliable strategy if employed more than absolutely necessary, but on the other hand, I now have a reputation for having cards to back up my chips when I put them in, so it goes both ways. I should make a habit of pulling at least one cold bluff a night just to stay unpredictable.

Work is going well. I went to a meeting yesterday that consisted of 98% acronyms, 97% of which I don't know the meaning of. I suspect that half of those were made up on the spot for my benefit, and the other half describe classified activities that I'm not even allowed to know about. There's always something. I now have a candy jar on my desk, which makes it more fun to be at work than at home.

I'm gonna have to find a poker game where the other players don't smoke all night. Half my wardrobe smells like Camels now, and the other half is dirty. There isn't enough air to go aroudn as it is up here, and polluting it just doesn't help matters. I guess I'll have to win quicker in the future.

Last Post as an Ignoramus

2005-08-10T03:24:00.000-06:00

This morning I'm supposed to get my Interim Secret Clearance, along with a detailed security briefing, mainly covering what I'm not allowed to see or speak of, which is apparently a good deal. Though no one has mentioned this forum yet, common sense will require an abundance of discretion on my part in commenting about work here. If anyone knows where I can get some of that (discretion; I have work for the moment), let me know.

Apparently the difference in the Interim Secret and Permanent Secret clearances are as follows:

Q: What is the difference between an interim and a full security clearance?
A: Interim clearances are granted in exceptional circumstances where official functions must be performed before completion of the investigative and adjudicative processes associated with the security clearance procedure. There is no difference between an interim and a full security clearance as it relates to access to classified information. However, when such access is granted, the background investigation must be expedited, and, if unfavorable information is developed at anytime, the interim securityclearance may be withdrawn.

That's according to the FBI. Now I'm not sure if it's them, or the OPM, or the DSS that's doing my investigation, but I know that I'm not in a DoE process at the moment.

So that's fun. I'm working now on not being frustrated by institutional red tape, and remembering that some of the people tasked with sticking me with it take their jobs seriously and don't appreciate the inefficiencies and loopholes in the processes pointed out to them, even when they act like they agree. Nothing new on that score, but I have to remember that the company is big enough that not everybody is an engineer.

One side project I want to get good at is recruiting fellow workers. HR has a bounty on exempt new hires that's nothing to sneeze at, although apparently you have to "know" the person you recommend and all that jazz. I'm not much of a judge of people, although I can typically sort out the competent ones.

I think I've found the kind of phone I'm gonna get, although I'm worried that connectivity to the comptuer will require additional investment, and might have to eBay my little bluetooth USB thingie that I used with my T610. As soon as I have a number for that, mark my words, I'm gonna update all the people whose addresses and contact info I have as to my new numbers and stuff. Then I can probably order business cards, although they'll be printed with invisible ink...

Political Dialogue

2005-08-08T21:02:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here, inexplicably, watching a debate between Hulk Hogan and Sean Michaels. I think I've been too hard on professional wrestling. It seems to get a bad rep among people who consider themselves literate, but I'm finding that I really admire it for what it is. I keep thinking back to last year, and wishing that what the debaters had to say was delivered with half as much gusto, or that they had anywhere near the commitment to enlightened discussion that these two gentlemen posess.

Granted, it's slightly surreal, and pretty bizzarre if you think of it as reality, but politics works pretty much the same way. At the end of a wrestling match, at least, there tends to be little debate as to who the winner is.

Hulk should be our ambassador to the UN. If nothing else, you know he'd be heard.

I've Still Got a Little Texan in Me

2005-08-07T22:45:00.000-06:00

After trying way too hard to connect my stupid computer to the stupid internet through the stupid ethernet cable, it turns out I was the stupidest elemnet in the bunch. Fortunately, there was a trivial solution, so now I'm online and in my room. The solution to the clothing storage problem is slightly less trivial, but will become more so soon, or at least I hope so.

I won second prize today in a Texas Hold 'Em tournament at On the Rocks. I got $15 worth of free food and drinks, most of which I had spent in the course of the game. It turns out that patrons of that establishment are almost as bad at poker as they are a karaoke, to the point that a novice like your humble narrator can clean up. If it weren't for the altitude, or the fact that I'm such a nice guy, I probably would have won handily. The trouble is I wasn't used to playing with increasing blinds and increasing minimum bets, so I didn't understand the advantage in winning early.

There some really good hands, and some really sad ones, but for the most part lady luck and I got along all right. She and lady skill were pretty good to me today, but both of them are notorious for being fickle girlfriends, so I don't think I'll pursue a courtship with either one.

Anyway, I finally caved in and bought lotion for my dry hands. I was a little metrophobic of the idea, but I guess I never realized how dry my skin was until I tried it. I got the Target brand, which is probably just as good as whatever it's knocking off, and better for me if I ever get cornered by a real man demanding to know what brand of lotion I use. This way I can still act like I don't care. On a side note, Target's razor blades for the Sensor and Sensor Excell are of a higher quality than Gillette's, for half the price. Woohoo!

My only other accomplishment was to find a desk for my room for $14.99 at Goodwill. Usually I find their prices to be a little high compared to the quality of the merchandise, but then I remembered that I can claim this desk twice on my tax return: once for buying it, and again for donating it back to them when I find a better one. I'm pretty sure that's how it works...

Not much else to say now, and I don't feel like going to the car to get my camera for some new pictures, so here's an old one from the late Nalla, Fleming House Cat from 2002-03. She was a great little kitty, much loved by all.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

2005-08-05T15:56:00.000-06:00

I'm writing this at a whopping 1600 x 1200 resolution on a 23" monitor that was sitting gathering dust in the room next door. Turns out it was for an Itanium workstation that has fallen into disuse, as Microsoft gave up developing a version of Windows for that architecture.

But all is not lost. Not only do I get a new toy for my temporary workstation (which is, coincidentally, the fastest computer I've ever had assigned to me alone), but I got to help my new boss put together a $5000 Pentium Extreme box. It should fly, although we're not sure how stable XP 64 is yet. Apparently getting a comparable system from Dell would set us back like 18 grand.

I'm going to a picnic tonight at the Flying W Ranch, which is apparently mandatory for tourists and strongly encouraged for employees. Should be some good food, although I'm still stuffed from the "lunch meeting" we had earlier. At the rate they're throwing hardware and food at me, it should be a pleasure to work unpaid overtime.

As an added bonus, I just scored a 30-foot ethernet cable, which means I can finally hook up my home computer in my room. Not sure yet how I'm gonna get the monitor above ground level; it might have to go on top of the TV to start with...

In other news, I had to send home my Dad's GPS unit so he can find his way up a river. Now I'll be lucky if I can manage to miss Nevada on my way home.

Given Me a Number and Taken 'Way My Name

2005-08-03T14:01:00.000-06:00

Hi.

I'm...somewhere, doing...something, for an Uncle we'll just call...Sam...

D'oh!

This secrecy thing is new to me, so I'm gonna have to be careful. I guess I'm still free to make stuff up, and if it confuses the bad guys (although they won't tell me who those are), so much the better.

I found my place of business, on the right day no less, and got off to a great start Monday. Naturally every system connected in any way with processing me crashed at least once, from the key to my door, to the badge picture that wouldn't take, to the 401(k) that's actually a 403(b), to the new on-line security clearance request form that I won't write about for fear of offending the very people I submitted it to.

It turns out that you have to sign in in ALL CAPS on odd-numbered days and in all lowercase on even-numbered days. I think everything is right, although it wants to call me the 1Vth instead of IVth, but ya can't win 'em all.

So I got to look at the code base that I'll be working with. When he said it was sixty thousand lines, I had assumed it would be broken down into a nice hierarchy of modules spread across dozens of source files and grouped into sensible libraries, but of course it's all in one huge file.

The change history in the comments is dated in Roman numerals, I swear. All the documentation is in hieroglyphics, since the project started in MCMLXXI. I'm fighting the temptation to suggest rewriting it in a modern language, but as long as they keep throwing more hardware at the problem, maybe it will solve itself.

What else...my cell phone, which has a camera included, is banned from the facility, as it could be a leak. So I guess I can't show you all pictures of the inside of the place. To sum it up: these things are always more exciting in the movies.

I'll be sending out change-of-address letters to everybody I know as soon as I know what my new cell number will be.

Happy Belated 100th Post

2005-07-30T19:53:00.000-06:00

So this is post number 102 for my humble blog. During that time, my readership has grown by leaps and bounds, or maybe just hops and skips and jumps, or maybe not at all. There's nowhere to go but up.

My major accomplishment for this week was getting all of my packages to my new place unscathed. Plus, I've elevated the TV to a good foot off the ground with a very professional-looking TV stand. Not that exciting.

What else...I sang karaoke the other day, but that was hopefully pretty forgettable. Just good enough not to be so bad I was good, ya know?

I got to see where I'll be working, or at least where I'll be while I'm getting paid. It turns out that I'm getting my own office, with my own name on my own door, and my own brand-new PC. Of course, the computer in my office won't be secure enough for actual work; we've got a stand-alone network behind locked doors for that. Basically, your office is where you go to avoid doing work; all the really productive stuff happens in the lab, which I'll share with two doctors.

The code I'll be working with is 30 years old, but still export controlled. I wonder how much farther it would have gotten if it were open, but then you've got to take into account getting bombed into the stone age if Charlie gets his hands on it.

So now my physical self is here, but there's still the small matter of sending out change of address notices to everyone I've corresponded with over the last year. I'll refrain from putting my address here, but just shoot me an email if you want to know it.

I'll be putting more pictures up on my flickr account. I won't annotate all of them here, because that would be double-blogging.

We have a sign!

2005-07-27T19:41:00.000-06:00

We have a sign!
Originally uploaded by ojcit.

Isn't that special?

Kitchen

2005-07-27T19:36:00.000-06:00

Kitchen
Originally uploaded by ojcit.

Well isn't this clever? Now I can blog from my phlog on flickr without even bothering with the Blogger logger.

Yet Another Use of Quantum Mechanics in Packing

2005-07-27T10:12:00.000-06:00

Just to show off my mad Excel skills, I'm posting a static-html version of the pivot table I used to keep up with my packages. [Note: this was A Bad Idea, as the spreadsheet not only doesn't show up in Firefox, it doesn't get along with Blogger either. I gave up on it.] It looks like I have too much stuff coming, seeing as how the room is already full and none of the nine boxes has arrived yet. I know I've been spoiled living with unlimited space at G-diddy's, but if there's one thing I learned at Tech, it's how to fit way too much stuff into way too little space.

If there're two things I learned at Tech, the second one is how to fit way too many activities into way too little time.

And if there are three things I learned at Tech, the third one is that space and time are inextricably intertwined in the first place.

They ain't kiddin' about that mile-high business.

2005-07-27T09:14:00.000-06:00

Here I am in sunny, pointy Colorado. It's everything you could ever want in a place to live, except of course for an oxygen-rich atmosphere. I have to take a nap every thirty minutes or so, and can't carry a letter to the mailbox without panting. That's gonna be an adjustment, I think.

I'm told that my packages (the first batch of them at least) are now safely in my office. I take this to mean that I now have an office. So that's one less thing to worry about. An office is a good sign; I've always had less work to do when I had one of those, and most people I know with offices seem to have a better time at work than those without them.

Lest you cube-dwellers should wax envious of the space, I'm going to post some pictures of my new domicile. It turns out that the room I rented has less space than my Accord. Basically all the stuff that came out of my car has rendered the floor more of an ideal than an integral part of the room. I'm about to go take pictures of everything, since I didn't have much light to work with yesterday. There's rain and stuff here, which is less than ideal, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, I'm living with a personal trainer and a window and siding guy, who both seem pretty cool so far. They're both older than I am, so they shouldn't get me into too much trouble. Unfortunately the Frietnamese lady didn't work out; we had irreconcilable differences in our concepts of square footage. But she's still awesome.

I would've gotten my Colorado driver license today, but I'm out of the kind of money they take. I've got little short-term liquidity, but slightly more plasticity to my name. The generous folks at Visa were kind enough to increase my spending limit fivefold, but something tells me that might have been a mixed blessing.

More stuff is forthcoming; I'm gonna run take pictures now.

I didn't know Daewoo even made monitors...

2005-07-24T22:23:00.000-06:00

This is as close to roughing it as I'm equipped to be, blog-wise. Well, no, I suppose I could update from my cell, but that's not the best use of my thumbs.

Anyway, I'm in Elk City, OK, for the evening. They said there wasn't anything of note between here and Amarillo, and, given where they were when they said that, that's saying something. The plan, according to my sister-to-be-in-law's fiance, is to hang a right at Amarillo and head northwards to colorado springs. Apparently I get to see more cows that way than by going through St. Louis.

I used to think Alabama was the most backwards state in the country. I'm not recanting that, now, but I have come to realize that threre are some contenders for the title. Take, for instance, the city of Florala, which lies, conveniently enough, on the Alabama-Florida border. I used to think that was a pretty stupid name for a municipality, but after passing through Arklahoma on my way to Texarkana, it doesn't sound so bad.

The scenery hasn't changed since Memphis, although I'm seeing a sharp increase in the number of American cars on the road. Most of the drivers are nice enough, except for people in maroon minivans. I don't have time to go into the reasoning behind this, but soccer moms are constantly trying to drive me off the road.

I'll take some pictures of the car loaded like it is, but it's seen worse. I hope the TV and monitor in the trunk don't get their pixels shaken loose by all the bumps in the roads, but the former is under warranty and the latter is obsolete, so I'm not too worried.

On the roommate front, I haven't made any progress since about thursday. I guess I'll go ahead and pay the greedy people at roommates.com for more access. I'll be paying for it if I don't, that's for sure.

I could probably afford a decent place on my own, but if I'm gonna be working with computers all during the day, it'd be nice to have another vertibrate life form at home to make some noise. I've only had one roommate, and he was pretty easy to get along with, being more like me than I am, but in a good way. I've never been the smart one in the room before, though.

Well, I'd write more, but the table upon which this lobby computer sits is about to break, and it shakes whenever I hit a key. That and my arms are sticking to it, which is sub-optimal.

If you're new to the blog, check out some older posts, many of which have actual content of interest to more people than just me, and a few of which I actually put some thought into.

The Trick to Moving

2005-07-22T11:16:00.000-06:00

is to realize that you are not just a person. You are a hundred different people in a thousand different databases, and moving all of them at the same time is next to impossible. This is before even bothering with actual cargo. Despite doing everything I can conceive of doing ahead of time, it's still gonna be a major headache.

For instance, I'm required to get a Colorado driver's license immediately upon becoming a resident. I'm pretty sure I need to present a valid DL on my first day at ITT as well. The only problem is, when I get a Colorado license, they will force me to surrender my Alabama one and issue me a fake-looking temporary ID, which will in turn delay everything from a new bank account to a security check to a car tag & smog check to a rent-ability check.

Then there's the medical stuff. Just to continue allergy shots, even with a note from my current allergist, I have to see another doctor out there. Apparently allergists from rival states don't trust one another, or maybe it's just a scam to get more business. Anyway, even though the allergins and Tabasco sauce or whatever they put in the needles will come from my allergist back home, I have to make an appointment to see the new overlord of the dominatrices who call themselves allergy technicians (or maybe I call them that, whatever).

I decided to go with FedEx, since they told me I could just ship my stuff to a FedEx/Kinko's in Co Springs and pick it up there. Then they told me I could only do that if I were sending the package "express," which, incidentally, isn't what the Ex stands for in the first place. I wanted to ship ground, and they said that they can't hold boxes when they ship them on the ground, because they'd have no way to keep track of it. It turns out that, while they can track millions of packages all over the world that are moving at varying speeds via land, sea, and air, if a box stops for some reason, it ceases to exist. Sorta like how photons can have a momentum but no mass. (How many people do you know who can't move an apartment's worth of stuff without using quantum mechanics?) Anyway, I shipped the first batch of boxes to my employer (I love having one of those), whose warehouse will have fun trying to decide what to do with them, since I probably don't exist over there yet.

Now my navigator has gone AWOL on me, so I'm gonna have to use mapquest, yahoo! maps(!), and google maps, and figure the best consensus of the three of them. I figure whatever I lack in direction I can make up in speed; if I drive fast enough at random for a long enough time, I'm sure to hit colorado eventually. They say it's a mile high up there, so all I should have to do is keep driving uphill.

Oh, and my car got new shoes. Apparently when I did my budgeting for the machine I didn't reckon on its preference for V-rated (the V is for expensiVe) tires. They're apparently the Air Jordans of roadware, if Mike played basketball in the mud, rain, and/or snow. This comparison got me to thinking why Nike hasn't come out with a line of tires yet, but I think I'll let somebody else make a million dollars off that idea, since branding isn't really my style. (BTW, I want to start a Hooters spin-off company selling coffee and magazines. I think I'll call it Moe Juggs).

It turns out Colorado is a whole state to the west of where I thought it was; it looks like Kansas swapped places with it or something since I checked the map last.

I'm sorry for not updating during my downtime, but my uplink is down in the dumps. I'm not sure if packets travel faster in the thinner air in the mountains, but we'll see. If anything, the letters should go faster when I'm uploading them downhill.

I thought I'd be on the road by now, but my mother said something about "deep cleaning" after I left, which means I've got to batton down some more hatches if I want any of my stuff to be where I left it. The more irreplacible something is, the more likely she is to throw it away. Plus I still need to back up all my files in case of, I don't know, something bad happening, even though the computer will be riding with me.

Head 'Em Up, & Move 'Em Out

2005-07-18T22:49:00.000-06:00

Now it's officially official; I'm a Hydrocode Analyst, headed for Colorado, where, I'm told, I have a job. I'm kinda taking it on faith that there is a company out there and that they have a job for me. Maybe it's all an elaborate hoax, but then again, I can't prove that the rest of the world isn't, so what the heck.

I've decided to pass on U-Haul in favor of just shipping my stuff. It should be cheaper and less of a hassle. The only big obstacle now is finding a driving buddy, since it's like 23 hours' worth, and my siblings are both indisposed, or at least not at my disposal.

I've started posting some of thel pictures from the beach at my brand-new flickr account. I'm thinking it's a little higher-class free picture hosting than photobucket, at least for visitors. Check it out.

I'm looking for roommates now, preferably ones with rooms already since the logistics of co-shopping with stranger for a new place involve too many degrees of freedom. I've met a Frietnamese woman who's renting out a posh room on top of a mountain or something. The only catch is, all the furniture I bring has to be attractive enough to match her decor. She's a little ahead of me in that regard, but maybe we can work something out. Since I'm a Taurus/Aires hybrid, and she's a Gemini, we "click," or so I'm told. I won't say more, since she could be reading this... Hi, if that's you. It may be a little more highfalutin than I had planned on, but the price is good for the accomodations.

I still have ahead of me the arduous task of deactivating my resumes, agents, profiles, and recruiters on a couple dozen web sites. I think I'll make a spreadsheet to list which ones are where and what the passwords and login names are. It's pretty ridiculous, but you know how much I like listing thins.

Speaking of that, moving is a great time to assess the total replacement cost of my worldly posessions. As I pack, I'm gonna be listing contents and retail replacement amounts to figure out how much insurance to put on each box.

If there's one lesson I learned the last time I tried this trick, it's to carry your GameCube memory card separate from the cube. One of the final traumas I experienced at Pacific Tech was when UPS lost my cube shipping it home, and when, paying out the insured amount, all the proceeds went directly to the Bursar's office toward my balance. In other words, I was denintoed, and had to start over on all my games when I did get around to buying them back.

So I'm doing an ambitious backupping project. Basically I'll assume that my computer is obliterated, my car stolen, and everything else is lost. I don't know if that will be enough precautions, but we'll see.

Today was Monday, and I have exactly 13 days until I report for work at wherever it is I go to do whatever it is I do.

I'll write more later (Charter is coming tomorrow between 8 & 5), when I'm further along updating my resume sites. I hope to get an apartment soon so I can start sending stuff ahead of me there, although if I room with the Vietnamench girl, who's only 97 lbs, I might have to pack in smaller boxes, or hurry and beat the truck up there.

Hydrocode Analysis

2005-07-17T21:44:00.000-06:00

If you're confused by the title, join the club. I've officially landed a position as a hydrocode analyst at ITT Industries Advanced Industries and Sciences in Colorado Springs, Co. The only trouble is, I have no idea what a hydrocode might be or how to analyze one.

It's been a big weekend, but most of it was devoted to reading Harry Potter. I won't spoil it, but I'm going to have to hurt these people who keep putting it off. Kind of hypocritical on my part, since i didn't read any of them until 2003.

Bleh, I have pictures, but still no internet connection at home. I've set up a temporary headquarters at my sister's place, but I expect to be kicked out any minute now.

Not much to say really, until I get the pictures from the beach and the Harry Potter party. Most of the costumes were underwhelming, although it was funny to see a 35-year-old man come dressed up as a wizard with a seven-year-old kid who wasn't. I'll write more when I get my Zoloft refilled. I've been having a headache since I ran out, and it's contagious, from what I can tell. Better quit while I'm still ahead, I guess.

I Put the Ass in Associate

2005-07-15T14:16:00.000-06:00

So I'm calling yesterday my last day at the Sharper Image, mainly because the boss started back today, and it wouldn't do for me to be in her company a minute longer than absolutely necessary. Once I found out that, by giving them the courtesy of a 2-week notice I was cutting myself out of commission for the period, I stopped worrying about courtesy and got more pragmatic in a hurry.

I started giving away my sales again, and managed to hook up some of my cow-orkers with some pretty sweet deals, including several RSGs. It gets tricky deciding whom to give which sale to, since you don't want to screw up anybody's RSG percentage or units/transaction average, or any of the other asinine ways they rate us.

Anyway, at one point some poor sucker decided he had to have a $10 HugOO pillow. It was originally $30, so I couldn't talk him out of it, but I had to decide who the benefactor of the commission ($0.04) would be. I logged in the register as me (which I'm required to do by the policy), and when the register presented me with a list of employees to choose whose sale it was, I got a singularly evil idea. It was the closest thing to a little devil on my shoulder that I've had in a long time. I think they call him the Imp of the Perverse, but I'm not sure.

It turns out that the first name on the list is the full-time stock boy, who isn't officially a Sales Associate. One might ask, "If he isn't a sales associate, then why was his number listed under the heading Sales Associates?" If one had asked my manager that, she would've probably gone off on a tirade about how short-staffed we are, and how our IT people can't be bothered with little details like that. Probably the same reason she makes me sort through a clipboard with 200 pages of emailed pieces of time-sensitive data instead of allowing me to take 400 milliseconds to search in the computer. But back to my story...

The stock boy is pretty cool, despite being an old friend of the PHB. He gets to use tape, box cutters, stickers, and ladders all day, which makes me jealous, since I'm already bored with all our products, and tape never gets old. Since he's a full-time stocker, he didn't go through the sales training, and isn't elligible for commission, and (according to my boss) can't sell anything.

So I figured, "If he's not a sales associate, what happens if I credit him with this $10 sale? It's about time he sold something anyway, always hiding in the back room watching DVDs and sucking up to the boss." Plus, since I was tired of trying to explain the virtues of well-designed (or at least half-debugged) software to my boss, I figured she deserved an example. She's always quick to throw the book at me, so my thinking was, if it's paperwork she likes, I'll give her some.

I typed in the stock boy's number (only one digit different to an actual sales associate, so if anybody asks, my finger slipped). The transaction went on as usual, and at the end of the day, the computer listed him among the sales associates. This was on Sunday, and nobody said anything about it when we closed.

So far, you're thinking, this is a pretty lame story. You may have to have worked in a similarly braindead beuracracy to understand how much trouble one mistyped digit can cause. In this case, Adam was instantaneously semi-promoted to sales associate, now has a customer history, and will probably get a commission report and RSG lesson (since he's at 0%, having only sold one item). I bet he also gets a letter telling him his sales productivity isn't high enough in a few weeks, although by that time he'll be using a different number to log in.

The reason he needs a new number is because now my boss has to terminate him as a stocker, re-hire him as a sales associate, then terminate him and re-re-hire him as a stocker. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets three W-2s in January from TSI, having now been spliced into more than one person. So, in the fraction of a second it took me to type one digit out of place, I've created probably dozens of pages of paperwork for the higher-ups who were so keen to keep me down. The district manager noticed, naturally, but the official story was that it was an accident. I'll take the fifth on that one, although I should probably start watching what I type here, seeing as how I'm gonna be investigated by Uncle Sam and all.

The moral of the story is, people living in glass libraries shouldn't throw books. That, and don't try to bury me in a loophole, if you're still close enough to the ground to fall into one yourself.

Technical and Non-technical Difficulties

2005-07-13T10:22:00.000-06:00

I've been hoping to report that I'm employed gainfully in Colorado Springs. The trick is to wait for them all to be at the office on the same day, find all the rubber stamps, and the extra-long roll of red tape required to get me hired. I understand that my low GPA means that they have to fill out "due diligence" paperwork, but that shouldn't slow them down much. I have an unofficial verbal offer from them, for what that's worth.

I'm also interviewing with Goldman Sachs in New York, for the position of Mortgage Analyst. This is yet another subject I may be qualified to be an analyst for that I know next to nothing about. Just goes to show you, I guess. These blue chip Wall Street guys like to have a room full of well-paid eggheads to tell them when they should buy and sell what. I can sound convincing, and that seems to be the most important thing. Sure, there are spreadsheets involved, and some occasional legitimate math, but for the most part I'd be a professional gambler. It's interesting that they ask for a background in "stochastic calculus," which sounded hard until I realized I'd already taken it under the heading "random variable calculus." That's the best display of mathematical marketing I've seen since they started calling imaginary numbers complex numbers, to try to dispel the growing belief that imaginary mathematicians were using actual money to do imaginary work. It's sad that the least sophisticated mathematicians are the best paid, but, at this point, I'll take it.

Just to keep my options open, I interviewed for a programmer/analyst position for a concrete manufacturer. That's right, you need a computer to mix concrete now. Apparently it's a pretty technical company, with 80% of the staff being involved with the programming. Naturally they use one of those sissy business/web-based/4GL languages, but at least it's local.

So basically, by this time next year, I could either be a Wall Street (ok, technically Broad Street) bond expert, a missile defense/hydrocode secret-cleared engineer/scientist/analyst guy, or a concrete-mixotronic engineer. The only people who like my resume are the ones who can't write a job description for what they need; they enjoy finding a candidate as confused as they are.

I'm still waiting on Charter to get their wires uncrossed. They gave me a new, cuter-than-cute cable modem yesterday, but the little lights on the front aren't blinking right, so they're coming out to fix it. That and the cable TV is out as well, but since we still got the All-star game, G-diddy hasn't suffered any permanent damage yet.

More pictures are forthcoming, including a few I plan to take at the Harry Pottery Convention Friday night. If you're not a Potter fan, what's wrong with you?

C-ya Later, Gator Tater

2005-07-08T22:18:00.000-06:00

I'm still chuggin' away at the Secret Clearance application, and I hate to think what hoops I'm gonna have to go through to get my license to kill. Since it was getting tedious, I resorted to my usual method of wasting time when I want to feel a sense of accomplishment without expending any energy or thought: giving blood.

Actually, I got bored with regular blood and switched to giving platelets and RBCs, via a process called aphoresis. I don't know how it works, and I'm not sure the nurses do either, but they have a cute little machine that sorts out which cells go where and what gets put back in. All they have to do is run through the 50-part medical questionnaire in under 45 seconds and stab me with whatever sharp objects they have handy.

I get an even bigger kick out of it because my blood type, like just about every other parameter you might use to describe me, is rare in more ways than one. I'm O+, CMV-, which means my blood cells can go to premature babies, cancer patients, and people suffering from immune disorders like HIV. If nothing else, that's my contribution to humanity (well, that and the prestigious publication that you, dear reader, are now enjoying).

Since it's Friday, and since the men at Samford are afraid of cooties, and since the girls know I have nothing better to do, I was summoned to go swing dancing at Roman's. I figured I'd take it easy, seeing as how I'm sort about 40 million platelets, but I had to revise that figure to keep the ladies happy. (Keeping women happy, I've found, if possible at all, involves, among other things, the ability to revise, rework, remove, and refuse all kinds of logic).

Anyway, the one who requested my services was of course not interested in dancing more than a half a song once I got to the place, but that was fine, since the crowd contained better dancers anyway. Granted, pulling me off my couch when I'm studying valuable educational programming and then refusing to dance with me when I ask her to dance, citing a disinclination to dance to the current song, then dancing with some old geezer 8 bars later is enough to make me want to break her ankle all over again. But I was in a good mood, and still feeling the effects of the missing brain cells that I suspect the people at the donation center helped themselves to while I was distracted squeezing the hand exerciser, so I let her off with a few choice comments. Not that they're comments anyone else would've chosen, but I guess I must've chose them on some level, because they came out of my mouth.

The alert reader will have noticed by now that my narrative, to this point, has nothing to do with my title. For the rest of you, notice that my narrative, to this point, has nothing to do with my title. This is the point at which the one matches up with the other, thus resolving the suspense I've been building up until now.

At some point, two couples of young people (gasp!) showed up. They were all interested in dancing and relatively inexperienced, so I took the liberty of teaching them everything they needed to know. The first thing the men learned under my tutelage was that, just as in chess, if you take your finger off your girl, it's my move.

Anyway, both of the ladies proved excellent followers and a joy to lead, and as an added bonus, one of 'em is a radio personality, interning for none other than Rick and Bubba. For those of you outside of the sphere of influence of the Southern Trump, Rick & Bubba are to redneck radio what Ben & Jerry are to quantum electrodynamics. (All four of them eat inordinate orders of ice cream). So that was kinda exciting, and she told me her name--voted on by the listening public--was none other than the legendary Gator tater, a reference to her alma mater and her favorite flick. She took a picture with me on her camera, but tells me that they can't put it on the Rick & Bubba website on account of the absence of the two sexy fat men, the event not being sanctioned by the Birmingham Buddhas. Luckily, since my editorial staff consists largely of my imaginary friends (and I use the term loosely, as many of them aren't speaking with me anymore), nothing prevents me from posting her picture here. If you haven't gotten anything out of the reading material in this article (and I can't blame you, as I certainly haven't put much into it), here's some eye candy.

She'll probably remember me, because she managed to slip and land on her butt at the end of the fourth dance. I caught her head, though, and she was no worse for the wear. Naturally her smart-ass date chose that moment to tell me she had a torn ACL, but I can't take credit for dropping a girl if she was standing on her own feet at the time. Unless I put you in the air, you're generally responsible to handle any unfavorable gravitational situations that arise.

Coup Data

2005-07-07T22:15:00.000-06:00

So I'm in "the final stages of the application process" with the blower-upper-designer people in Colorado, and they've got me filling out an app.

Now I get the thrill of tracking down payroll records for jobs I worked at 16 and 17, figuring out if I have an alibi that I was self-employed as a tutor in high school, and trying to sort out how to list the five or so different gigs I held at Tech while I was busy doing everything else.

My favorite question, which is a simple yes/no, actually comes at the end of the form, but it would have made more sense at the beginning methinks:

Have you ever been an officer or a member or made a contribution to an organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States Government and which engages in illegal activities to that end, knowing that the organization engages in such activities with the specific intent to further such activities?

It gets better:

If you answered "Yes", explain in the space below.

And, yes, they provide a total of one line for the explanation. I feel safer already.

What bugs me about it is the hyprocracy of the thing. I mean, here we are, the week of Independence Day (or Good Riddance Day as the British call it), patriotically celebrating the anniversary of an act of high treason. We're a nation founded on the notion that there are times when a government simply has to go. I'm not engaged in the violent overthrow of the United States Government, nor do I belong to any organizations that are (although the Society of Women Engineers always seemed a bit sneaky...). However, I wouldn't be a Patriot if I put my love of my country ahead of my commitment to what it stands for in the first place. Government is a tool to protect freedom, and freedom should not be sacrificed to protect it.

Of course, it gets interesting determining what constitutes "illegal activities" in this context. I mean, a coup d'etat is only illegal if it fails. Revolutions are righteous, but rebellions are punishable by death. Kinda an all or nothing game.

Anyway, if there are any G-men reading this, don't get your g-strings in a wad. I've invested too many tax dollars in Uncle Sam to want to topple him by force. Naturally there are some things I would change if I had my 'druthers, but I'm really not charismatic enough to lead a coup.

On a more serious note, I wrote the above sections yesterday, before the attacks in London, and no connection to those tragic events should be inferred. All references to hypothetical future revolutions are abstract musings and should not be construed as threats.

I Left My Skin in Sandestin.

2005-07-03T05:47:00.000-06:00

While there are innumerable stories I could post about the members of my traveling party over the last week, I've about decided that this is not the place for it. On the one hand, it's too easy to poke fun at one's own family, and on the other, it's too easy for them to read what I write. I'll let things cool off for a spell and then go about my venting in less obvious ways when I've recovered from my R&R.

Among the throngs of people vying for the coveted position of first against the wall when the revolution comes we now have the Coppertone R&D department. It seems somebody thought it would be a good idea to make sunblock that goes on like spray-on deodorant. They did, and it wasn't. You end up with a cloud of sticky, useless stuff that seems to call out to the UV gods, "Hey, look, I'm over here!" Anyway, when I get around to posting pictures you'll be able to see how unfairly the tanning genes were distributed in my clan.

Creditors don't seem to understand the concept of vacation. They just went ahead and sent bills last week anyway, when I was quite clearly not at home to pay them. I figure those shouldn't count, since they weren't considerate enough to bill me at my own convenience. I'm gonna be lucky if I can avoid an overdraft fee; it gets confusing when we switch months like that. I hate how they divide the calendar into such unmanageable chunks. What we need is an 8-day week, where you work two days on and two days off on average, and half the population alternates with the other half. Then put 32 days in the month, with 256 to the year; much better all around. The astronomers can sort out how it affects the rest of the cosmos. Maybe I'm just saying this because the sun and I aren't on particularly good terms right now, but whatever.

What I don't get is why monkeys never get sunburned, and who decided it was a good idea to develop fair skin in the first place. In the future you'll just take a pill at breakfast to determine what color your skin is for the day, unless you opt for the modular body package, where you mix & match limbs and features much like Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head. It's not just a game anymore; our grandchildren will be crawling on the floor trying to find their noses half the time, while generation Y is still fiddling with contact lenses.

The next big thing after that will be artificial beaches. I foresee Japan mastering the concept first, creating a comb-like island where 98% of the surface area is within 200 meters of the shoreline, and all the properties are perforce beachfront. The more dangerous the weather, it seems, the more valuable the property is these days, so the whole Ring of Fire could be a major attraction.

It'd be cool if supermodels could shed their skin all at once like snakes. There might be a market for a Heidi Klum shell somewhere. If nothing else, I'd buy a set of skin just to wear on the beach. Combine that with temporary freckles and you'd be set for life. Maybe the halfbakers should hear of these breakthroughs...

I'm actually working today, which means they didn't find a way to fire me while I was gone. I had hoped to hear an offer last Friday so I could've used last week as one of my 2 notice-weeks, but it looks like I'm stuck for a while. I didn't sell anything while I was out, but some people brought some things back, so it all evens out.

If Anybody Needs Me...

2005-06-25T08:10:00.000-06:00

tough.

I'm going to the beach with my hyper-extended family for a week. Zoloft, don't fail me now.

My Legacy

2005-06-24T06:29:00.000-06:00

I am contacting you on behalf of the Office of Student Life at Caltech because you are currently storing boxes in the Caltech SAC trunkroom. Due to the renovations to the South Houses that will be going on in the next year, the trunkroom is going to be completely emptied of its contents by June 26, 2005. If you are able, please remove your belongings by Friday June 24th at noon. If you are unable to do this, the Office of Student Life can move and store your belongings until October 8th, 2005 (end of the second week of classes) for a fee of $7 per box. If you would like the Office of Student Life to provide you with more information about what you have stored, please email cleanout@thebasement.pacifictech.edu.

Thank you.

Elizabeth
Communications Coordinator
Pactech Alumni Association

Hi, I didn't realize I had something still down there. Could you please tell me what it is? You have my permission to open any boxes with my name on them. Thank you, Oscar

You have a blanket, throw pillow, some solaris 8 manuals, a box of plastic
easter eggs, some student health extension forms, what looks to be a 5x
board, a Technics CD player, a 15" monitor, a HP Deskjet 5000, and 2
plastic drawer units with assorted computer junk.

-Curtis Smith

Curtis,

Is there any candy in the Easter Eggs?

I think I can live without most of that stuff. You have my permission to donate the blanket, throw the pillow, recycle the manuals, eat the candy from the Easter Eggs (or hide them somewhere), shred and recycle the health forms, dump the 52 board somewhere (preferably the La Brea Tar Pits), donate the CD player to the nearest museum of natural history, and deposit whatever you can't identify in the Blacker or Dabney courtyard, whichever isn't full at the moment.

Thanks, Oscar

Who'da Thunk?

2005-06-23T07:12:00.000-06:00

I just bumped into a website covering written languages, and noticed an untranslated scripts section. What's funny is that what appears to be a left-handed swastika is included in European runes that are anywhere from 6500-8000 years old. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I don't even know what part of my head to scratch over that one. Maybe the Aryans invented writing.

Anyway, I've come up with a new system at work. Since I'm already going to be Written Up for not selling enough stuff per hour, and not selling enough replacement guarantees per stuff sold, I've decided to give all the credit for the rest of my sales to the other associates. It doesn't make sense for all of us to be written up at once anyway, and if one of them passes the threshhold and actually gets commission, then more power to them. There's no point in having more than $0 in sales if it's less than $180/hr and I'm getting the book thrown at me anyway.I really want to give notice really soon, and since I have all next week off for vacation, I could kill half my lame duck period with one strike.

For those of you who think I'm just whining, note that Tuesday we had three managers and three associates working at once, with maybe 2 customers per hour. Since my target sales aren't scaled by how many competitors I have, I really can't get too upset for missing an arbitrary number. Now, if the overlord says I don't have enough RSG %, I can remind him that I gave away four of them to another associate. Maybe the beneficiaries of my new plan will let me use their discounts when I'm retired and making actual spending money.

I've gotta run now if I want to eat breakfast, which I do, so I will.

Phase 1 Complete

2005-06-22T22:20:00.000-06:00

One of the best-known, if not the deepest, 20th-century philosophers had this to say about job interviews:

But what about the date, there's dating going on, on this room, right now. We can all feel that little bit of tension. What is a date, really, but a job interview that lasts all night ? Only difference between a date and a job interview is not many job interviews is there a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it. "Well Bill, the boss thinks you're the man for the position, why don't you strip down and meet some of the people you'll be working with".

I think he's on to something, but it goes both ways. Some dates turn out not to be dates. I mean, you pick the girl up, feed her dinner, open the doors, the whole nine yards, but it doesn't count because of some technicality (who ever heard of a third cousin?). By the same token, there are job interviews that turn out not to be job interviews. Some of them are pyramid scams, some cram 20 people into an office and herd them like cattle, and still others switch from being employer to being employee without batting an eyelash.

The lady today said she would consult with her staff to see if they could help me, and wanted to schedule a second interview. Of course she asked me to bring a loved one with me, which was weird, but whatever. After going over all of the ways her company will bend over backwards to help make an executive out of me, she casually mentions, "Of course, there's a cost involved."

It reminded me of the scene in that movie where Deuce is settling terms with his first "client," and she's trying to explain to him that he's her client. She wants him to pay $1000, while he's trying to get her to cough over $40. I was in a similar situation; they wanted me to pay $1500-$5000 for the privilege of putting on a suit in 90-degree weather to go to a fake interview. They might not be first against the wall when the revolution comes, but they won't have to wait long.

On the entrepreneur front, I've bought another car load of books. I'm taking inventory now, and will post it here for my imaginary friends to read. My favorite find so far is a ten-volume set of Bancroft's History of the United States published from 1866 through the 1870s, with original binding and in half-decent shape. It's hard to figure out what they're worth, but there are people online trying to sell incomplete sets for over $400. I paid $50 for them, and should be able to get $100 without too much problem, although I may just hang on to them, since they're so interesting. I'll post some scans and quotations from some of the quainter titles.

It's really fun buying 60- to 100-year-old books for less than the cost of blank paper. Now all that remains is to figure out Phase 2.

Itty Bitty City Stages

2005-06-19T23:50:00.000-06:00

So I managed to sneak off to like 4 hours of City Stages on Saturday. It was a good time, even if there were only 20 or so people there. It was maybe half the size I remember from last year, or 25% of its peak attendance. I don't know what the city needs to do to save the festival, but there are certainly more pressing issues, even though I'd hate for us to lose it.

I discovered the Magic Fun Bus, which puts the crunk back in funk. I met the girlfriend of one of the guys in the band (I held out my hand to ask her to dance and she put a promo CD in it). Actually, I picked out three girlfriends/wives of band members from three separate groups totally on accident. It must be one of my dubious gifts.

A couple of Swing Kids showed up and decided I was the only man there that it was safe to dance with, or maybe they were just too shy to ask anybody else. So I had partners aplenty between them and an assortment of women who "don't dance." I've learned that "I don't dance," is a much weaker protest than, say, "I won't dance." Also, if the music is loud enough, you can pretend not to hear them declining the invitation. No means no, but that doesn't mean you have to take no for an answer.

They say 40 is the new 30, which means 20 is the new 10, which gives me an excuse for how I spend my time. What it doesn't excuse, however, is 60-year-old women with bare midriffs. Cleavage is one thing, but if your navel is above your neckline, it's time to pass the hoochie-mama torch on to your granddaughter. Naturally, the girls who look 22 are only 14, and the girls who look 19 are really 30. Women have a warped sense of time.

If, on seeing this picture, you think, "Hey, that clock reminds me of me," bikini season is over for you.

I was ticked off at having to pay $25 for four hours, but then when I got to the place, I just moseyed in through a hole in the fence. Appartently one of the budget cuts this year was in the fence enforcement department. I never actually came across a ticket booth, but I'm not complaining.

We survived Father's Eve and made close to 15 grand for the store. I'm still not making my minimum to earn commission, but the good news is they have a minimum draw salary that I get. The other bad news is that I'd be doing much better off if I'd stayed on Unemployment, but I digress.

I do have an interview tomorrow with an evil genius working on missile defense. I didn't ask what military his team contracts for, but at this point I'm relatively ambivalent. If hired, I'd have to get a secret clearance, which will be hard for me, since I haven't kept a secret in my life. I'm wondering if the whistleblower protection act keeps me out of jail if I uncover some secret plot that I'm not supposed to uncover on account of it being secret.

Oh, and I watched Vanilla Sky, and was disappointed at how much explanation they gave at the end. Also, I wonder if it was really tom cruise behind the mask, as it would've been much cheaper to make a cast of his face and get some $15/day extra to do his scenes for 2/3 of the film. It turns out that when you mangle his face, he's really not much of an actor. So when you think about it, all he really has going for him is his face, his wealth, and Katie Holmes.

That consolation made more sense in my head.

Shameless Exploitation of Critters Cuter Than I

2005-06-17T11:59:00.000-06:00

Child prodigy Jack, spreading wings like Icarus.

Heidi. The size of the bricks has not been exaggerated.

Heidi again.

Heidi yet again.

Morning Hickness

2005-06-17T07:10:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the delay between postings, but the tangled wwweb they've wwwoven seems incapable of supporting my poor little neglected machine.

Anyway, City Stages is this weekend, but I'm gonna miss most of it, since i'm working. It's tempting to quit now with two minutes' notice instead of two weeks', but that's not good business ethics, or something. These days, companies can be bought and sold in less than two weeks; governments can topple in that time, and people can go from being married to divorced about four times in two weeks. But me not showing up every day to talk people out of buying gadgets would upset everything too much.

Now, if someone gave me an all-access pass, you know I'd be outa here. I'm certainly not going to miss any job that forbids me from surfing the net on the clock (even when it's just to answer a customer's question about a product). For their part, my cow-orkers have gotten used to the idea of getting all the commission I would be getting if I were selling what they were selling, as long as I don't hurt the store's numbers. The other day was one of the best Wednesdays we had on record, with one customer buying $3000 worth of toys on a whim. Naturally my colleague saw him first, and acted like he had accomplished something when the guy left. Separating a fool from his money is no great feat, but it can be profitable.

Speaking of fools with money, there's at least one who's done something right. I try not to take notice on the intrigues of celebrities, but when somebody steals my girl I can't just stand idly by. I haven't decided on a course of action yet, but I'm planning to watch Vanilla Sky, which should infuriate me with Tommy Boy all the more.

Oh, and I have an interview in Turkey next week with a Colorado-born man from Hunstville, or maybe it's some other way around. Naturally the district manager decided to put all hands on deck that day to rearrange all the merchandise for our post-Father's Day blowout. This will be the first sale of this kind in the Sharper Image's history, which goes to show you that even the early adopters are a discriminating bunch. So that means I'm working six days straight (as a part timer, mind you), and have to be in two places at once. You know your job isn't right for you when you hope to get an ultimatum that will push you over the edge. It's just that, if I'm gonna be fired, I want it to be spectacular. It's at least reassuring to know that nobody's failure is as memorable as yours.

Watch your six, Maverick.

Revoking the Charter

2005-06-14T03:14:00.000-06:00

My internet connection has been hit-or-miss today. I'm about ready to switch to an ISDN or smoke signals, since the cable service is so unreliable and slow. That and Charter unceremoniously declined to interview me for the position of cable guy. I can take my business someplace else, as long as g-diddy still gets his fix.

It was a very productive day by my standards. I did like four loads of laundry, vacuumed another third of my floors, folded the last three weeks' worth of clean laundry, called all my recruiters and informed them of my incentive program, got my head shrunk, and hit Outback to celebrate my sister's cotton transplanniversary.

Anyway, since I don't have anything exciting to report aside from beating all the songs on Monkey level with a gold DK award (I know you're all proud), I'm gonna paste something else that I wrote for the Tech back in the good ole days before they graduated me.

No, I don’t understand the words that are coming out of your mouth.

Depressed at having missed out on celebrating the coming of 2003 with the Western world, I decided I could redeem myself by ringing in the year of the goat. I attended this year’s Spring Festival thinking at worst I’d lose $3 and a couple of hours, but was pleasantly surprised more than once at the vivacity, creativity, and pride that went in to making the evening a memorable one for all in attendance.

I’ve attended my share of Caltech parties, including events put together by just about every student organization on campus, so I speak with some degree of authority when I say that the Caltech C outdid themselves with this one. Never in my career of twenty Decompressions has the Winnett lounge been so packed, nor so well decorated. Everywhere I looked were shiny orb-looking-deals, huge non-ASCII characters, goats and sheep and a plethora of all things Asiatic. The food was abundant and delicious, although I lack the words (literally) to describe exactly what I was eating. Having arrived early, I had the pleasure of watching a hundred people stand in line as I ate, which made savoring the cuisine even more enjoyable.

The festivities were hosted by emcees Xin’ an (Joane) Xiu and Gang Duan. First year grad student Xiu was dressed in an exquisite red and gold satin dress, decorated with Chinese lettering in what I assume to be a traditional fashion. If it isn’t traditional, it needs to be, starting now. Duan was probably wearing clothes too, but because he was standing next to her your humble reporter failed to notice.

The Southern Chinese Youth Association performed classical tunes in a most professional and euphonic fashion, including a spectacular feature with demonstrations of various traditional (or maybe they were cutting edge—Chinese, in any event) wind instruments. I’ve known scores of wind players, but I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed anyone who could play half a dozen instruments in a row without compromising musicianship. Actually, it’s not correct to say he played them all in a row, because this soloist (whose name I unfortunately neglected to find out) managed to play two of them at once. In tune. And in harmony. The instruments resembled a much finer version of the plastic recorders children play in school, which are not know for their intonation. This man was wailing.

Opening and closing addresses were given by the head of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles. I had meant to learn Mandarin on Saturday morning, but I overslept, so I missed out on understanding the finer points of what I’m sure was a delightful speech. Most non-Mandarin speakers would’ve been confused at hearing it full speed without subtitles, but once you’ve survived an ACM 95c lecture, you can make sense out of anything.

Party games were a lively diversion, including several rounds of Charades. The clues and answers were transliterated for the rest of us, but for all practical purposes the game was rigged in favor of those who actually knew how to read all the little pictures. The most popular category seemed to be “idiom,” which generally meant I was hosed.

Later, however, I managed to redeem myself. I used my mad linguistics skills, knowledge of song lyrics, and utter imperviousness to embarrassment to win two door prizes in a later contest involving songs with the word “goat.” You had to be there.

An unexpected highlight came from Eli Jorne, a grad student in applied physics who at first glance doesn’t appear Chinese at all, who gave a passionate rendition of a Chinese (I think) song entitled “Girl, Please Look this Way.” His performance was complimented by at least one listener, who noted his astute proficiency in the finer points of Mandarin. I’m jealous, not because he could make the crowd laugh uproariously, but because he knew what they were laughing at. That and he’s a mighty fine singer to boot.

In addition, I got to hear the finest zither performance I’ve ever encontered, saw other students in musical acts, skits with goats and sheep, and interpretive Tai Chi dancing.

All in all, I’d say the Chinese C has raised the bar for heritage. I know culture isn’t a competitive sport, but I may just be persuaded away from KSA, OASIS, or CLASES in favor of these goat-loving people with the Karaoke machine and all the other traditional Chinese cultural gadgets.

What Women's Lib Movement?

2005-06-12T18:30:00.000-06:00

In addition to teaching the art of shorthand, the book I got for a quarter has some interesting advice for would-be shorthanders. Women readers should be careful reading this; your bra might spontaneously combust.

The Thing About Onions...

2005-06-10T23:49:00.000-06:00

...is that they can make you cry.

On the plus side, the customer who bought the one item I sold today also got the replacement guarantee, so I'm up to 0.76%. Woohoo.

My Sharpening Days May Be Numbered

2005-06-10T08:18:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was fun. I've sold a total of zero replacement/service guarantees for the month of June, for a total of zero percent of my sales. It's not that I'm not trying, mind you, but the more pressure they put on me to sell the things, the worse I feel for my customers, and the less enthusiastic I feel about selling them.

So of course I had to watch the training video again, in accordance with policy. This time they made me watch it standing up, because if I got to sit in a chair it wouldn't be "like a punishment." Then I got in trouble for going back to watch it without consulting with all three managers. It sure is fun having to ask permission to do something you've been ordered to do, but it comes with the territory when you have three bosses who actually pay attention to you.

The worst part was that they revoked my yo-yoing privileges. I'm not allowed to touch the Yomega for a full week, and in the meantime, I'm supposed to handle products that aren't selling well, or that have a higher profit margin. That got old a much faster than the yo-yo did, since all it did was drip on me and make me look even less sophisticated.

Anyway, I was closing yesterday, and it was just me and Chris, who bears a striking resemblence to Morpheus, but whose resemblance doesn't bear much on the narrative I'm about to relate. About ten minutes to closing, a woman in a hot pink shirt and shortish skirt came in and asked if we had any of the 23" LCD HD TVs in stock. I dutifully checked on it, and couldn't even begin to try to sell it to her before she decided to take it. So I looked in the 'puter, and it said we didn't have one, but then I asked Chris, and he said we should have one anyway, so he went back into the cage to unlock the one we had while I rung her up. Of course I told her about the service plan, but she wasn't having none of it. I figured, ok, if she buys a $1700 TV on a whim, maybe she considers it disposable. How should I know?

Naturally, she pays with a check, which is where the story gets slightly more interesting. It's a winnie-the-pooh check from Bank of America, with an address on it, a name that matches her ID, a watermark, and the whole bit. I run it through the validator, and it validates itself, so the transaction goes through. So Morpheus goes and retrieves the TV from the holy of holies in the stock room, while my customer asks me to show her some iPods. Interestingly, she inquires as to how many people we have working at the time, and, being the honest kid that I am, reply, "Just us." Then she wants to know if I have to go back and help him carry it, but he's got a handle on it, so I follow her to the iPod case.

At this point, accounts differ. Chris says that hot on her tail was another gentleman with the same area code as her who wanted to buy a DV Handicam with a check. Same deal, no questions, he just wants one. Since we haven't seen anything illegal happen yet, he goes to the back and fetches it.

About this time, I'm helping a 9-year-old explain to her mother what an iPod is, and how it's better than an XM MyFi. For one thing, it comes in pink. I'm so jealous of all these preteens with iPods. When I was her age, I was lucky if I could bang on a pot with a spoon for entertainment, and then only after I'd eaten all the porridge out of the pot. But I digress.

Anyway, since Certegy verified the check and I did all my procedures right, it looks like we're not liable for the TV. I'm not in trouble for the likely $1742 theft, or the stereo that disappeared sometime during the circus, about which, coincidentally, someone called two minutes after its vanishing act to inquire about the price. I am, however, in pretty deep effluent for not selling the service plan on the TV. According to Chris, who is the world's leading service plan evangelist, if he were going to pass a fraudulent check to buy something, he would always get the service plan. I tried to argue that it's just one more trail of bread crumbs for us to follow to get to the culprit, but he countered with the fact that we don't write down serial numbers of the gadgets we sell.

So anyway, I'm still at 0% RSGs, and will almost certainly be written up for not selling 5.25%. There's no real fixing it now, since I've sold like $4000 already this month, and the only way to sell the big RSGs is to sell a high-dollar item, which will further dilute the percentage anyway. Plus, as Chris was quick to point out, selling something big without the plan hurts the store's percentage, which takes money out of the managers' pockets. I'm did my best to cry myself to sleep over that one.

The moral: if you suspect someone is using a stolen check to buy a $1700 HD TV, make sure you get them to steal the service plan while they're at it. Retail is harder than it looks.

Verbosity City

2005-06-09T09:32:00.000-06:00

For the sake of sounding more edumacated, I wrote down some more words that I wasn't a hundred percent on, then made 'em blue with my magic excel commands. Nothing much happened yesterday, except that I got a new belated birthday present. I'm lovin' it.

We Love to Fly and It Blows

2005-06-08T18:31:00.000-06:00

I got nominated to fetch the sister-to-be-in-law from the airport, and found her (and the airport) right off. Of course they managed to leave the planeload of luggage on the tarmac for an hour while they waited on the lightening to get less scary or something. It was a dubious excuse, since several flights that arrived after hers had their bags in the claim before hers did. Naturally I inquired into getting the second hour of my parking validated, and the dude who answers the phone in the parking department got a good chuckle out of that suggestion. The chief baggage apologist said it was an act of God and there was nothing to be done. She recommended that I call 1-800-GOD. I told her it seemed more like the work of Zeus to me, but then gave up.

I would've called God, but then I remembered all the backtithes I owe. You don't want deities auditing you, especially ones who have tax collectors following them around.

My neighbor, the retired Colonel and active barber, got himself a new puppy, tentatively named Heidi. I'll post pics when I get back home, because dogs are more photogenic than most of the people I know.

Oh, and I went on a $2.50 shopping spree at the Friends Bookstore at the Homewood Library. I got a book on shorthand, a 200+ page, full-color biology textbook, a booklet on the Atomic Energy Merit Badge, and a history of Germany written in 1947. Plus a bonus book of Robert Frost's poetry. I like Frost because his poems don't make my head hurt. For all you Whitman fans, they've got Leaves of Grass for a quarter.

Some of the family came by yesterday, and we cleaned up the place for the first time this season. Everybody seemed impressed with my vaccumin' accumen, and a good time was had by all.

I'm gonna stop writing, because there's not much left to say.

Further Chronicling of Wasted Time

2005-06-05T23:41:00.000-06:00

I've posted two of my new ideas to the halfbakery. Vote for me, and I'll let you keep reading.

Also, here are some of the results of me dragging a poor defenseless pencil against and even more unfortunate page.

I'll get more inspiration later. Still thinking about a logo for my think tank. I've already told ya'll the motto, right? We think, therefore we tank.

Moonshrining

2005-06-05T14:31:00.000-06:00

I've long been planning to start my own cult, but now I'm starting to get the idea that it's really all been done, and there are plenty of groups who have done the work for me. I went to a dance given by the National Kidney Foundation on Friday in honor and benefit of my sister and other transplant recipients and wannabes. She's a transplolympian, and they need money to go to Louisville, KY next year. By the looks of things at the party, they'll be able to rent elephants to ride up there if they want.

On an unrelated note, here's a picture I came across today. I don't know who's in the pic, but I'd like to meet her.

I came close to vacuuming the floor today, even going so far as to remove the instrument from the closet and relocate it to the floor in need. I guess I don't wanna rush into something like that. The roaches might stage a coup if I messed with their turf.

Nothing much is new at work. I got a call from a 32-year-old man, who has no phone, no job, no credit card, no bank account, and no mailing address to speak of who is desperately searching for a...wait for it...blue lightsaber. We don't have any in stock, and they're only getting to the distributor on the tenth, but he'll call us back and ask later if we have it. I could've sent him to Nashville if I'd felt like it.

I keep getting an urge to go get four bagels for $3.41. It's one of the cheapest ways to get full I know, and I don't have to clean up the kitchen afterwards. Not that I would clean up the kitchen anyway, but this way the floor doesn't stick to my feet.

I would comment on something relevant to the rest of the world to the rest of the world, but I'm kinda out of the loop. Deep Throat has been revealed, but so far that doesn't have any significance to most of us. There are enough current scandals to worry about that I'm ready to forgive Nixon.

I need new dancing shoes, from what I can tell. That or better socks, b/c I abused my feet the other day at the shrine place. Fortunately I was prepared for such a contingency. I'm so bored.

Sharper Image still hasn't rewarded me for any of the ideas I've submitted, so it's time to send them some more. Seeing as how the Halfbakery doesn't protect the ideas submitted to it, somebody sooner or later is gonna make money off them. Now I don't think that that's a particularly nice thing to do, but I'm a nice guy, and if anybody is gonna steal someone's idea for profit, it might as well be a nice guy. That way, the money goes to somebody who can use it nicely, and not avaricially. Then again, most of their ideas are worse than mine.

I'm rapidly approaching the deadline to give two weeks' notice before City Stages. Surely there's another job that pays at least this well that I can line up before then. I'm working on an incentive program for the headhunters, maybe something involving a free cheesecake to the first one who lands me a paying gig.

Oh, yeah, Leslie showed me a great thrift store called the Foundry. I got a new (to me) leather jacket for $15, and a silk shirt for $0.99. Plus the tie I wore to the shriner shindig. I'll find the pictures later; they must've gotten lost between my camera and computer.

I've gotta go to the bank, because somebody in HR still can't wrap his mind around the concept of direct deposit. A check is still money, but it has an implied message of "I really don't want to pay you, but this the closest I could legally come. Have fun at the bank."

New Words, and Other Finds

2005-06-02T21:07:00.000-06:00

I went back to the sporting goods place and found a more liberal clerk to trade in my hand exerciser. This time I got a receipt for $9.99 instead of $7.99, and all because I didn't show her my receipt. As a bonus, the cashier was an even prettier redhead than the previous one I had the pleasure of dealing with, although I felt bad making her have to process the return. It was more complicated than it had to be, b/c she issued me a gift card and immediately depleted its balance back to zero. I guess it's a learning experience for her.

I got some duds to wear to this dance I'm going to tomorrow at a slick thrift store in Bessemer. I'll have to take pictures. Basically I'm going as somebody I'm not, or maybe somebody I would've been if I wasn't who I am. Anyway, I'm gonna dance, and it's about time, too.

I've started reading Catch-22, first in a checked-out copy and then one I found at the thrift store. I also got a cookbook that I'm told even I can follow, a book on shorthand (I need to learn an obsolescent skill to maintain my retro-dork certification), a copy of Animal Farm, and A Tale of Two Cities (among my top three all-time favorites).

I decided to look up another batch of words that I didn't recognize, or that I didn't have a denotation in mind for. They are posted below to benefit the interested and aggravate the disinterested.

bradawl
buxom
cerulean
cloth-head
congenial
elfin
escutcheon
fog
forelock
furgle
genial
gentian
heavy weather
infundibuliform
jocose
lissom
lorgnette
messuage
nile-green
noblesse oblige
pensive
poesy
popinjay
portentous
pouch
pretentious
prolix
rarefy
scraggy
seamy
skittle-sharp
stoic
strident
supra
votary
winsome

How'd it get to be Tuesday?

2005-05-31T12:56:00.000-06:00

This seems like a waste of time, but if I had a job, I'd just be typing something else that hardly anybody reads anyway. Here's some pictures I took of some dogs I know.

Wilson

Sadie

Winnie

Luna

OK, so not a dog per se, but a critter nonetheless.

Now I'm out of dogs, but still have more pictures. So much for sticking to the theme.

My brother climbing a tree. He taught Sadie everything she knows.

That's all for now; I'm pushing my luck as it is having both the electricity and internet connection working at once. I feel a crash coming on.

Another Almolst Holiday

2005-05-30T19:05:00.000-06:00

The trouble with these holimondays is that you never know what to do on them. I mean, sleeping in is a given, but you don't wanna go anywhere, b/c everybody will aready be there ahead of you.

I almost made it to Albertville to visit my sister-to-be-in-law, but we caved at the last minute on account of my sister double-booked herself with her volleyball coach's dog. (This is gonna be one of those stories that makes you appreciate the interesting things I write).

I'm ready to carpet bomb Charter at this point, since my connection is still nonexistant at home. I've stolen my sister's PC to waste time on blogger in the hope that you my readers will be able to waste some of your own without all of the effort of actually writing.

All that happened yesterday was that I tried to take back a hand exerciser, but they only wanted to give me $7.99 because they upped the price on the new ones to $9.99. Now, they've already switched it for me once at that price, but this time the cashier wanted $2.18 to cover the difference. Of course, she only knew that I'd originally spent $8.16 b/c I actually brought the original receipt; if I'd left it it'd've been an even exchange. She said she couldn't trade it (same UPC, same product) because she'd seen the receipt. I admire her honesty, and didn't argue the point. I was really proud of myself for not making a scene, even though I couldn't have lost the argument if it got to the manager. Plus, there were people waiting behind me, which was more the fault of them being understaffed, but they might not have seen it thataway. The upside is that this one broke much sooner than the first one I bought, which means my hands must be getting stronger somehow.

I'm bored, if you couldn't tell. Nothing seems to be happening here; my yo-yoing is only getting worse and work is pretty stagnant.

Anyway, if you want to kill some more time, check out the Infinite Cat Project. Then tell me I have too much time on my hands.

I'm planning on actually doing something tomorrow. Stay tuned.

TEOTWAWKI

2005-05-28T22:46:00.000-06:00

It looks like time stood still today. I knew something was funny.

I also thought i felt an earthquake earlier, and meant to look it up, but never did. I'm sure these events are related somehow.

Nothing much exciting happened at work, except the string of the yo-yo broke and i got to replace it. Now it's back to its full length, so I'm getting like 100% more job satisfaction.

I'm too lazy to write anything serious now, so I'll just paste another letter to a would-be boss. This one had to do with me answer his question about my GPA and where the other half of it ended up.

Dear Mr. Shaw,

I am writing to address your concerns concerning how I spent my time in college. Were I in your place, I would be asking the same question: if this kid has the combination of ability and masochism necessary to get into Caltech and stay long enough to get a degree, then how come his grades are barely enough to squeak by?

As engineers, you and I are not in the business of making excuses. We push our systems to the point of failure, pick up the pieces, learn everything we can from them, push the point of failure further away when rebuilding whatever it is we broke. Engineers are notorious for extending this worldview into worlds where it is not generally expected, and indeed, where it can be unwelcome. I don’t say this to dodge the central question, but to attempt to get across the idea that when I fail it is never because of lack of trying and it is rarely without learning something. It is because of thinking too hard, working on too many things at a time, expecting results too early, or some combination of all of these. My greatest strength and greatest weakness is the ability to be obsessed with dozens of ideas at a time. When in the real world, there are typically only a finite number of projects to attract my attention, but in a thriving collegiate setting, the sky is the limit. Fortunately, all I need in an R&D setting to keep these tendencies under control is someone with some common sense and a rolled-up newspaper to hit me over the head every now and then.

Among the more tragic features of live at Tech was the fact that, while Admissions actively seeks well-rounded students, the reality of the curriculum (especially in the first two years) requires most students to maintain an often unhealthy (mentally, physically, and emotionally) level of focus on academics. The immediate result of this intensity is to starve the extracurricular organizations of students who have the time to commit themselves to them fully; even though there is no shortage of talented students who would like to participate, many of these feel it not worthwhile to join organizations if they can’t go all-out. For students with academic scholarships requiring the maintenance of minimum GPAs, the compromises required of them have visibly disheartening effects.

When I discovered these harsh realities, I made a conscious decision to optimize my collegiate experience for overall quality of life, learning, and relationships, not on my transcript. This decision was not by any means an easy one for me at the time, and if my reasoning seems long-winded, it’s only because an extremely vocal minority of the voices in my head made no end of protesting it. If I had it to do over again knowing what I know now, I might not do it, but then I wouldn’t know what I know now, so I’d end up doing it all over again (you know you’re a hacker when you can put infinite loops in prose). I remember my failures for years longer than my successes, and I count those scars as the most valuable experiences of my career so far, not just because they came at the greatest cost.

As to how I spent my time when I wasn’t studying, I was basically doing everything else. Since so many student organizations were short-handed, I became a varsity cheerleader, trumpet player in the pep band, jazz band, concert band, and graduation brass section. I even enrolled in Pasadena City College as a music major to play in the Lancer Marching Band, since Caltech had no marching band. While at PCC I also played herald trumpet for the Rose Bowl Queen and her Court at official functions, including the coronation. I was active in the Society of Women Engineers, the Korean Club, Caltech Christian Fellowship, Chinese Club, Caltech Y (including community tutoring and Alternative Spring Break), CLASES (Latino club), Caltech Ballroom Dance Club, Gymnastics Club, and California Tech. It goes without saying that, having sworn undying loyalty to Fleming Hovse, I never shied away from the needs of my fellow Flems. I spent a sizeable chunk of time on house activities that are too numerous, scandalous, and/or secret to enumerate here. Finally, every spare second I had was devoted to picking the brains of my erudite and eccentric classmates, where by “picking brains” I mean “chasing skirts.”

A clever reader might suspect at this point that I participated in these activities to avoid the stresses of legitimate studying. Hopefully I can allay this fear somewhat by describing some of the classes I took outside my option to challenge myself and broaden my horizons. I took the infamous EE/CS 51 and 52 courses in embedded programming and digital circuit design, which have been known to convert aspiring electrical engineers into raving lunatics or even literature majors. These courses were not required for me as a mechanical engineer (at the time), but I knew that they would push me as I had never been pushed before. Fifty-two, in particular, was probably the most arduous and yet most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had; the pace of learning and applying knowledge was beyond all prudence and sanity for someone as scatterbrained as me. I ended up not finishing that class in the end, even though the hardest parts were behind me, not because of the intellectual challenge, but for the emotional trauma I put myself through. In some ways I’m prouder of that F than of any A I’ve ever made.

As bad as my transcript looks on paper, taking into account a few more quirks about Caltech might help one to get a clearer perspective. One of these is the abnormally high “flame rate” of the freshman class. Since the bottom quarter of the bell curve disappeared out from under me, my standing compared to the rest of the survivors was proportionally reduced. One hundred percent of the incoming freshmen were in the top ten percent of their high school classes, and dozens of valedictorians and salutatorians were among them. Since the only way to have everybody stay in the top ten percent of the class would be a massive tie for top GPA, ninety percent of us were disappointed. Since many of my classmates had immediate and serious consequences of letting their grades fall, I was willing to do my part in holding up the tail end of the curve. (All kidding aside, one of Caltech’s greatest attributes is the spirit of cooperation among students, which fosters collaborative learning and improves the social skills of otherwise reclusive scholars).

This survivor’s curse extends to individual courses, where Tech’s late Drop Day encourages many grade-conscious students to bow out if they aren’t satisfied with their midterm grades. I’m the kind of guy who bites the bullet until the bitter end, so I didn’t pull that trick in many cases where it would have benefited my bottom line.

Another reason for the difficulty of maintaining grades is the combination of a staggering array of required courses and high turnover rate of instructors for them. During my time at Tech, very few classes in my option were taught by an instructor who had taught it the year before. Consequently, much of the professors’ and TAs’ energies went into designing the courses (which often differed greatly from their descriptions in the catalog) and homework sets, whereas veteran instructors who knew what they were going to say could concentrate on saying it. Students routinely found bugs in course notes, problem sets, and even exams, which had to be fixed at the last minute. I can remember being assigned proofs for theorems that turned out not to be true and writing code in a custom language whose specifications changed without warning during the course. Although these problems affected everyone equally, I didn’t lose as much sleep over them as most of my classmates.

Just to make sure this dead horse doesn’t get any ideas of getting back up, I feel I should mention that certain personal, medical, and familial situations had a severely adverse effect on my concentration and motivation, particularly in my senior year. In the interest of privacy and (while it’s probably too late) brevity, I’ll omit the details except to say that I have spared no expense or time since then to regroup, readjust, revise, resurrect, and rebuild myself. This process spilled over into the months following my graduation, and, combined with two close family members’ serious medical problems, delayed my job search and created a minor gap in my employment history.

Obviously grades alone cannot describe the value of a student’s education or ability, just as the number of stars for a movie review is not sufficient to tell if the film is worth seeing. A GPA is a one-dimensional measure of a vastly more complex set of experiences, aptitudes, and abilities, and, while I wouldn’t mind mine being higher than it is, there are more important things to consider. If it helps, you can think of my degree as being an overall Two Thumbs Up. I don’t, because I like to think our faculty is smarter than most movie reviewers.

Thank you again for bringing me out to interview. Your leap of faith means the world to me, and I know you won’t regret it. I know also that as bad as I want this job, I want you to have only the best engineers working on these systems as you can possibly find, because the future of medicine, and therefore the quality of life for billions of people, are at stake. While I may not appear to take myself seriously, know that at the core of my convoluted thought process I am dedicated to producing excellent results. I appreciate this opportunity to show you my scars and to tell some of the war stories behind them, as it would have been far easier for you to assume that I just didn’t care enough to excel in academics.

Sincerely,

Jay Carlton

Surely You're Joking

2005-05-26T23:57:00.000-06:00

Just found out there's gonna be a Feynman stamp. One of my regrets in this life is getting to Pacific Tech too late to meet him. He was a character, that's for sure.

If you haven't read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, you're missing out. Don't worry, it's actually comprehensible.

Death to Charter

2005-05-26T18:56:00.000-06:00

It figures that they'd pick my day off to break the cable system in all of Hoover and Homewood. I guess that counts as being relevant to somebody other than me, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I've put up another of my billion-dollar ideas over at Halfbakery. It needs a picture to go with it.

Also, I dumped some more pictures in my bucket. I keep meaning to annotate them and put them in some kind of order, but that seems too much like work, and, like I said, this is my day off.

The Difference in a Recruiting Firm and a Staffing Firm

2005-05-26T12:39:00.000-06:00

is that you have to wear a tie for an interview with a recruiting firm. Also, they're much pickier about who they send to their clients, and mainly concentrate on managerial types. Turns out Leslie made the right call in that regard; if they don't specify business casual, a suit is the way to go. Not to mention that I have to wear the suit like 60 more times before it goes out of style if I'm gonna make it as cost effective as the rest of my wardrobe. (One of the things I'm learning by being destitute is to appreciate all the stuff I've already acquired).

I had an interview with one of the recruiting firms this morning for a project manager position at an industrial locality. Obviously I don't have any experience designing industrial equipment, but I think I was just called in to help train the new recruiter. She just sat in on the interview and nodded vacantly, but it was fun.

On an interesting side note, the interviewer was once a manager at another gadgeteria I used to work at. Small world.

The most exciting thing I did today was get a free T-Shirt from Old Navy. They don't do that for just any old customer, only those of us who are ranked first mate or above. I've just been promoted to rear admiral, and all the cashiers have to salute me when I come in.

My internet connection got really slow this morning, so I had to go next door and use the Colonel's ISDN line. That made my cable modem jealous and forced it to cooperate. My poor machine is lonely with me being away all this time during those long working hours. Not to mention in need of a makeover in the worst way.

I'll post more interesting things later, including some comments on the rest of the world for those of you who aren't enthralled with my inward analyses. I for one am sick of me, so hopefully this will be the last narcipost for a while.

This is the dullest sharpening gig ever.

2005-05-24T21:29:00.000-06:00

I got in trouble again, this time because the percentage of my net sales from replacement/service guarantees wasn't above 4%. That means that, while I was selling enough, we weren't making enough profit (a.k.a. free money) from the guarantees. The only punishment was to make me watch the RSG DVD again. Apparently I just didn't understand the concept. All you have to do is sell the product by overstating its virtues, and then sell the replacement guarantee by underestimating its quality. It's sleazy, is what it is.

I put my foot in my mouth pretty good. I asked a customer (who was about my age) if she had anything picked out for father's day, and it turns out her dad had died in the last two weeks. That's really sad.

Other than that, work was all right, as my manager wasn't there, but I'm going back in at 9 in the morning. Somehow I'm working full time hours for part time wages and non-benefits.

I'm pretty much officially approaching broke now. I lost money taking this job, because now I'm ineligible for unemployment (of course, i'd be ineligible if I'd turned it down too...). I guess it'll all work out in the end, as the dollar isn't going to be worth a yen in ten years anyway.

I should really look into increasing my dosage. Life still won't be enjoyable per se, but I won't notice.

I did get called by another headhunter today. So now I'm working with like 4 different agencies, not including places I'm directly applying to. I should really pull an all nighter and apply to another fifty or so places, as I might just be getting the knack for it.

I think I'll give my two week notice tomorrow. Depending on how my boss's day off went today, I may not have to. The team is back up to a full roster now, so my absence won't be unbearable as soon as the newest three associates complete their training.

Nobody comments on any of these posts anymore. I might have to stage a one-man writer's strike. You wouldn't want that. Just throw me an emoticon or something; I'm dying here.

It's RIP to Earnest T.

2005-05-24T09:26:00.000-06:00

Some sad news today. Two accomplished actors, who stood for everything that was right in entertainment and advertising, have passed away. The first was Thurl Ravenscroft, better known as Tony the Tiger. Instead of burying him, they're gonna have him sliced into little flakes and frosted, a process which will of course preserve his remains indefinitely.

Also, I just read an obituary tied to a brick that came crashing through my window that Howard Morris died on May 21. If you've never heard of Earnest T. Bass, then you're missing out on some of the true gems of western culture. Some sound files are located here. I'd say something funny, but there's nothing I can do to compare with his comedic genius.

Why I Didn't Get Into Grad School: Exhibit A

2005-05-24T00:37:00.000-06:00

My Personal Statement

It may seem familiar, but all similarities between my essay and any other work is purely coincidental and untentional. Written January 15, 2003 (started hours ahead of and finished minutes before the application deadline, of course).

As I pondered, contemplating a better vehicle for stating
My interests, objectives, and what purpose I believe I’m destined for,
Eventually I got to thinking I could keep my attention span from shrinking
If in lieu of prose I did my inking in a form less prone to bore.
“Well at least,” I mused, half joking, “it hasn’t been done before…”
Just a page and nothing more.

Mechanical engineering, the direction I’ve been steering,
Is a quest I love so dearly that at times all else seems but a snore.
Then again, please don’t be fearing that I’m at all afraid of veering
Into disciplines that may be nearing mine; for I’m eager to explore.
As a researcher I’m as giddy as a kid in a candy store
Stocked from ceiling down to floor.

I’m a four-year member of SWE (better ratio than IEEE),
And also joined SHPE and the Mars Society, if you’re keeping score.
Something of an interloper, curious ponderer and high hoper,
A former EPR spectroscoper—I could’ve majored in the core.
Now I seek to make my mark in the annals of post-Newtonian lore
As a scientist and engineer, and maybe something more.

In research that’s still ongoing, I help keep the data flowing
From the modeler to the mesher to the finite element cruncher core.
Fortunately my skill set as a coder exceeds my talents as an oder,
And I’m handy with a motor (something ME72’s good for).
I can plug, chug, and debug and perform other needed chores.
An engineer indeed I know I am—I think—therefore.

My purpose is to reach enlightenment, or if I don’t, to thrive in spite of it
And contribute to the scholarly environment I so ardently adore.
I’ve spent four tough years already drinking from a fire hose a steady
Torrent of aqueous knowledge till my head be thoroughly waterlogged and sore.
A productive academic career thus far, despite a GPA of 2.4.
Consider me anyway please, I implore.

Because I swapped Poe’s dark symbolism for facetious philologism,
An unkindness of wrathful Ravens tried to tap through my chamber door.
Yet I’d an ace up my proverbial sleeve here as my sympathetic sister Beaver,
Having heard a thousand nevermore’s, scrambled over to see if her
Brother’d been devoured by the ungainly fowls and lay writhing on the floor.
She was relieved to find the raving avians had yet to breech my chamber door.

An unparalleled quick thinker, the she-beaver began to tinker,
And ‘fore the prophet-bird-devils knew what had hit ’em had reinforced my chamber door.
She rescued me from this jam by constructing us a dam,
And the Ravens, lacking arms, had neglected to bring a battering ram.
Tho’ my window was wide ajar the birds kept wrapping, tapping, while I them ignored.
Until they starved, and then nevermore.

Evolutionary Throwbacks

2005-05-22T23:49:00.000-06:00

If you look at someone hard enough, it isn't hard to find areas where that person may be behind the curve in terms of crawling out of the primordial ooze. One area I need to work on over the next ten million years or so is in adopting a human sleep pattern. I'm still hibernating, and it's almost June.

I had to work from 2-6:30 today, and you'd think even I could manage hours like that. Granted it's Sunday, but I gotta do what I gotta do. Still, I couldn't get up before like noon, and fell asleep as soon as I got back from dinner at like 7:30. I woke back up like an hour ago, and now I'm not tired enough to sleep, but too tired to do anything useful.

The trouble with this job is that it pays marginally better than Unemployment Compensation, and I can't quit the former without losing the latter. If I'm terminated, I'm likewise out of luck. Thus I need to find a way to be laid off.

Layoffs are the kind of thing that you can count on to happen when you least need it, but when you could use one, there aren't any to be found. I guess I shouldn't bemoan being employed, and I'm not; it's the terms I don't care for.

The problem I keep coming up against is the fact that I'm a technophile and a problem solver first and foremost. I tell customers the best solution for their need in an honest manner, seeing the thing from his point of view, or what his point of view would be if he knew what he were talking about. I don't push products simply because of their profit margins or other shallow incentives, because I have too much integrity for that. Coming from an aerospace environment, where developing the highest quality product is paramount compared with trivialities like cost, it's really sad to be pushing somebody else's poor excuse for technology so they get rich at the expense of my reputation.

I almost managed to get terminated Saturday by doing exactly my job. Basically, we have promotion that gives customers 20% off their second product if they buy two products, and 10% off the third through fifth if they buy more than that. So I was ringing up this woman (which is not as fun as it sounds) who was planning to come back the next day to exchange a gift she received for an upgrade, and was also buying a smaller item that day. So I said, "Oh, and if you bring your receipt from this transaction tomorrow, we can give you 20% back on this thing you're buying right now." She smiled heartily (which gave me more satisfaction than anything else I'd done on this job up until that point) and left happy.

Well, you'd've thought I'd swallowed an iPod or something by the way my manager reacted. She went off on a tirade on how she'd have to do all this paperwork to honor what I said (which was really just what the sale said), but my point was that I was simply acting in the customer's best interest. I told her that I look at everything from the customer's point of view, and she basically told me in no uncertain terms that this was heresy. I'm supposed to maximize sales in every instance, not "exploit" the terms of the sale. She further went on to say that the concept of a sale went against the way the company did business, and she found the whole thing bizzare. Apparently I went way outside my authority in tellling the customer how to save money, and that if any loopholing was to occur, the customer should initiate it. Naturally, she'd go out of her way to honor any claim like that on the part of the customer (it involves a simple return for an even exchange of the old product when buying the new one to take advantage of the sale) but said that most customers would never think of doing that. I reminded her that the terms of the promotion said nothing about the multiple purchases happening on the same day, and she acted like the ambiguity was my fault. She said that I "created issues" by "manipulating the system." As far as I'm concerned, however, I'm barely even debugging the system. (Don't even get me started on the myriad ways the company could streamline its operations by going paperless).

Where I come from, loopholes are not swept under the rug. The boundaries of any theory are where the most interesting things happen; where there are flaws there are areas for improvement. I told my manager that we were in uncharted waters, and she agreed, but was still threatening me with termination for providing excessive customer service. I tried to explain that I could not be held responsible for short-sidedness on the part of the marketing and legal people, but of course it's easier for her to shoot the messenger I guess. Customers, I'm told, don't think "the way I think," and I shouldn't help them cause trouble. Ironically, there would have been no issue at all if the customer had done everything on the same day, because of the daily update interval for our POS systems (an artifact of an ancient way of doing things from the days when communications of a few KB of text was expensive). Once again, for a company selling overpriced high-enough technology, we fall short of our purported standard by a considerable gap.

I'm kinda mad at myself for answering "Yes, for now," when she asked finally, "Are we cool?" Now I'll have to give two whole weeks' notice instead of being done with the place immediately. There's a possibility of getting commission, but it requires really milking every customer for his last nickel, including selling overhyped replacement guarantees which serve mainly to quintuple the profit margins. What's really disgusting is that they apply quotas on how many of these we sell, which encourages associates to mislead the customers and intimidate them into buying the policies. It's hilarious to watch them sell the RSGs: first they extol the virtues of the product, and when the customer decides to get one, they then try to scare them into believing the product will break several times in the first three years of operation. Since the replacement guarantees are "more important than products," there's no real incentive to make lasting devices.

Anyway, I have a couple of leads to call tomorrow, which should work out better for me. If I'm going to sell out, I need to do it for enough money to pay the bills, at the very least.

I guess I'm really not supposed to diss my employer like this, but I figure there's an amendment somewhere that lets me get away with it, and besides, if I'm going to be chewed out for helping the customer take advantage of our sale, I don't feel all that bad for venting my frustrations here as opposed to the obvious approach.

Goodbye Hello, Hello Photobucket

2005-05-21T08:59:00.000-06:00

That's right, photo fans, I'm dumping Hello for a new image hosting system. This should provide more flexibility for taking pictures from one place and putting them in another.

As the inaugural pic, here's one I took from inside the car wash. No real reason, but it looks kinda neat, and you'll swear your monitor looks cleaner just for displaying it.

2005-05-21T08:35:00.000-06:00

Sorry, highness. I totally uploaded this one yesterday, but it must've gotten lost somewhere along the way. Might be in somebody else's blog.

Lethality Engineer

2005-05-20T00:56:00.001-06:00

I like the sound of that. This morning I got teleconferenced while I was in the shower by three engineers in Colorado Springs. Turns out they're looking for somebody to blow stuff up, or something. I took notes, but I'm too lazy to read them now. It's a missile defense group, a small group in a huge company. They tell me I'm on their short list for the position, even though I hardly remember applying for it.

As soon as that was finished, I went in for my second interview of the day, with the recruiter for the administrative/clerical staffing section of the place I went the other day. Not great money, but better than what I'm doing now. If I didn't need a job so bad, I'd have asked the interviewer out. We got along great, and she was definitely into me. We talked about the economy, education, demand for jobs, social security, what to do when all the baby boomers are in a persistent vegetative state (hint: it rhymes with "mull the slug"), and other clever nonsense.

It looks like I've got some new readers in Boston, to whose email I'll reply tomorrow, and who need to weigh in on the quantum singularity vs. Holy Trinity question. They're both astrophysists, and one of 'em's a Catholic to boot. Oh, and congrats on being engaged, getting degrees, and enduring the locals.

2005-05-20T00:56:00.000-06:00

My costume for the 8:30 showing. I was trying to out-geek Leia, and according to her I succeeded.

2005-05-20T00:45:00.000-06:00

And for those of you still in the dark, I went and spelled it out on the back.

2005-05-20T00:32:00.000-06:00

These two were watching Episode II on their iBook while waiting for Episode III to start. Don't get no better'n that.

2005-05-20T00:22:00.000-06:00

Remember, this is a 12:02 AM showing. I don't know how that kid's dad convinced his mom to let him out that late on a school night. What's funnier is the fact that the dad split his two kids up so that he could get a better seat than the ones in the front section of the theater.

2005-05-20T00:21:00.000-06:00

Our resident Jedi master, who defended us against Green Light Saber Guy. (OK, so I talked him into instigating a battle, but the crowd loved him.) The plan here was to take the picture with no flash, using the Light Saber as source lighting. Looks like it worked.

Last Minute Plea

2005-05-20T00:19:00.000-06:00

This picture makes me happy and sad at the same time. Kinda like the movie.

2005-05-20T00:17:00.000-06:00

Queen Amidala and her escort. My only complaint is she didn't have the two-tone lipstick.

2005-05-20T00:16:00.000-06:00

Priceless.

Showtime

2005-05-20T00:15:00.001-06:00

This is one of those pictures I took to make me feel better about buying a digital camera. I figured I'd break even vs. 35 mm after 3000 or so pictures.

I went to the 12:02 theater, and the line next to mine was for the poor suckers who had to wait until 12:03. We ripped on them as the ushers let us in: "Why not just wait for the DVD?" Of course, it goes without saying that the 12:01 crowd was equally obnoxious to us.

2005-05-20T00:15:00.000-06:00

The one on the right is a local celebrity, or would be, if anyone watched UPN. The other girl is a publicist or other hanger-on. This was just as they were finishing up doing a video feed outside the theater.

Sir! Sir! I've isolated the reverse power flux coupling!

2005-05-18T19:16:00.000-06:00

Well I'm going to see Episode III tomorrow at 8:30, but I still couldn't resist the temptation to buy a ticket for a 12:02 AM showing. I figure I missed being there opening night for the last two episodes, and I won't get another chance.

Work has been dull since they took away my favorite toy. My boss said it was distracting me. She had complained previously that I looked too busy carrying around my clipboard and making notes on how to improve products, so I had thought the yo-yo was a good way of breaking the ice.

I didn't make her very happy today, firstly because I read my schedule wrong again and she had to call me, secondly because I trounced her and everybody else in Texas Hold 'em, thirdly because I pointed out another half-dozen design flaws in the POS system, fourthly because I disagreed with her on company policy regarding word-of-mouth discounts, and pentawise on account of my calling the enemy at a customer's request to ask about a hypothetical product that we didn't have.

See, it turns out there are discounts that we can give to customers who ask about them, but that we can't tell them about. Seems to me like a recipe for disaster, since sites like fatwallet and techbargains routinely distribute coupon codes. I hate having to withhold information from my customers, and resent not being able to look up product specs and third party reviews on the internet at work. I'm more interested in finding the right solution to my customer's concerns than about selling them one of ours pre-packaged. She tells me I'm in it for the commission and hte spiffs, but a Jedi craves not these things.

She tells me "You don't have the mindset for retail." I was not in a position to disagree, having sold almost nothing all day.

Good news on the car front, for those of you keeping up, she's totally unscathed. I called the dude that was scared of the bug to tell him there would be no claim, and resisted telling him "Maybe we'll bump into each other again one of these days." Okay, so I didn't so much resist the temptation as not think of the line until after I had hung up, but that's probably for the best.

Three and a half hours till showtime. I guess I should watch episode II while i'm waiting. I want to take pictures of people in line, but I don't think they'll let me take my camera in.

Now I'm autistic _and_ artistic.

2005-05-17T22:43:00.000-06:00

Well I started my art lessons today. Turns out she wants me to use acrylic and oil in the same painting. Sounds like a scam to me (having my art teacher also be my paint supplier seems like a confict of interest), but I'll go along with it. I was about the median age for the class, as the next youngest was 11 and the next oldest was like 45.

I took pictures detailing the progress of my painting, of course, which I'm gonna upload somewhere more convenient than the place I've been sending them. I'll upload them soon enough for my eager fans.

After that, I helped my sister-to-be-in-law's fiance, the man of whose men I am officially the best, (a.k.a. my brother, if that saves anyone any math) move her stuff from what I thought was the middle of nowhere to some other place no-one from nowhere has even heard of.

The quote of the day came from the Shift Manager at the local roast beefery. Here it is in its original context:

Me: I'd like a grilled chicken sandwhich.
Arby: We don't have grilled chicken.
Me: What about a grilled chicken wrap?
Arby: That has grilled chicken on it.
Me: I'll have that then, with a side of fruit.
Arby: What?
Me: Froo-ot.
Arby: [dead serious, staring at me like I'd just ordered crème brûlée] What are you talking about?
Me: Never mind. I'll have the curly fries.

I've been doing my best not to discombobulate people I meet with my exuberant lexicon of esoteric sesquipedalian neologisms, but sometimes even the little ones can throw people for a loop.

Small Victories

2005-05-15T12:01:00.000-06:00

One of the things you learn to do when you hit rock bottom, is to relish any chance you get to stick it to The Man. Today I got revenge on one company whose product I've been using daily for as long as I can remember. They've been trying to use forced obscelence to squeeze extra money out of me for years now. I'm as big of a technophile as the next geek, but two blades were plenty. Now they're up to 4, and trying to do away with old-fashioned customers like me.

Anyway, things with this fine company have gotten out of (quality) control. The little artificially intelligent hair preparers aren't glued in right half the time, and the extra protrusions end up leaving a 1/16th-inch sideburn all down my face. And a scar if I'm lucky.

So I bought a pack of 8 of the Sensor 3 for $15.99 the other day b/c they were out of the sanely priced ones. Sure enough, after taking that hit (which was before I ran out of money, although it probably helped propel me thataway), two of the mil-spec blades turned out to be duds. This from the guy who invented the safety razor.

Anyway, I used the six that worked, and took the other two back. Now my receipt file has paid for itself. I rule.

Not one of my best stories, but there's no point in a blog that's interesting all the time. I've got to make the good entries stand out somehow.

2005-05-14T21:28:00.000-06:00

Traces of love...i wish. My sincerest apologies to Yui Ichikawa. I'm only posting this to remind people to haggle me to keep at it, or quit while i'm not too far behind.

Good ole friday the 13th.

2005-05-14T20:53:00.000-06:00

Well I got rear-ended by another Accord, but since it was the same year, they must have known to be nice to each other, because there's no visible damage. I'm gonna have Tameron Honda look at the paint to see if they see anything, though. The dude who hit me had already stopped at the red light behind me, but took his foot off the brake when a cockroach fell into his lap. Pansy.

I started selling stuff, at least in theory. All my customers have left happy so far, but that's because most of them didn't buy anything.

Oh, and I realized that, no matter how dumb my ideas may be, they can't be too stupid for the Sharper Image. Behold, the solar-powered flashlight.

I started drawing, or practicing drawing. Got some great 60-lb. paper and pencils of all softnesses. If that doesn't make me an artist, I don't know what will. Right now I'm concentrating on lines that are straight and circles that ended up where they started. Pretty much everything else can be built with that stuff anyway. Also got some tracing paper, so I can prove to myself that my muscles are capable of going throught the right motions. I started with ugly people, so i wouldn't feel bad for messing up, then moved quickly onward to gorgeous ones. I figure sketching could be a better ice breaker than dancing when there's no music, or no floor. Pretty good scheme for getting a captive audience, if nothing else.

I guess it was inevitable that I try visual arts again. My Renaissance manhood depends on it. Plus, I don't want to be embarrassed in another job interview where they ask me to sketch something.

Go Bucs.

2005-05-11T22:26:00.000-06:00

A certain high school has just been listed in a certain magazine for its prowess in certain activities. I'll give you a hint: it ain't web design.

I was almost 5 minutes late to work...

2005-05-11T22:05:00.000-06:00

...but then they told me that I was supposed to have been there at 9 instead of 1. Oops. They were really nice about it though, and since I was just doing training anyway, it didn't inconvenience anyone.

I hope that bad luck in writing down the hours for today means that my interview with a local staffing firm went well. I had called them at 9 and they told me to come in at 10. What's cool is that if I hadn't written the wrong schedule down, I probably wouldn't have gotten the interview in the first place. Good karma I guess.

I haven't been writing for the last couple of days, b/c I've been busy filling out the "Best Ideas" forms for my employer. Every time I submit an idea that they later implement, they're supposed to give me $100. I've come up with about 45 ideas so far, and I've only been there 4 days. Despite my track record, many of these are great ideas, and my managers are already trying to get me transferred to the product design team in San Francisco. In the meantime, i have a better chance of making ends meet by submitting ideas than by selling. The commission is more of a theory than a form of payment this time of year, although in december it works much better.

Tomorrow is my first art lesson, or really a pre-lesson interview. I hope it goes well, b/c I need to be able to sketch my hair-brained ideas.

For my dedicated readers, I'll paste another article from the archive. This one is about MacHomer, a hilarious and brilliant one-man show that came to Tech during my tenure.

The concept is foolproof: take a play that’s so renowned that no critic in his right mind would attack it, and cover all the rolls with characters from a show that’s at least ten times as popular The sum of the works of two of the greatest creative minds of all time, Matt Groening and William Shakespeare could not possibly result in anything short of brilliance. Starring the theatrical talents of Rick Miller, MacHomer provides the audience with impeccable Simpsons impersonations, hilarious and convincing acting, and a sophisticated use of multimedia. The end result is a creation that transforms the Scottish play from a tragedy into a sitcom, without losing respect for the masterpiece.

The fact that he managed to preserve the dignity of both MacBeth and The Simpsons is a testament to Miller’s outstanding vocal talents. Characters drawn from all over Springfield are imitated in a manner that is acutely precise in sound and true to the personality of the character. From the half-gargled nagging sigh of Lady MacHomer (Marge Simpson) to the evil yet senile tone of Duncan (Montgomery Burns), Miller has virtually all of them nailed. Although I was skeptic going in to the performance, I was amazed at the level of professionalism with which the Simpsons universe was adapted and presented.

There were a few characters whose imitations could have been better, notably Bart and Lisa Simpson, who had only minor roles. Originally cast as Fleance, Bart actually rejects the part, causing an on-the-spot tryout process to commence. (Eventually we are left with Rod Flanders handling the role, whose innocence is every bit as annoying on stage as he is in cartoon form.) In virtually every instance, the character speaking is immediately recognizable to a dedicated Simpsons fan, but for the sake of the unenlightened, Miller provides pictures of each cartoon character when introduced, along with the name of the role that character played. Surprisingly, the quality of the drawings flashed on the screen rivals that of the original animators. It’s something of a miracle that Miller has been able to take the show on tour for six years without getting sued. The Simpsons is one of the few consistent money-makers in the Fox arsenal; it’s surprising that an actor can borrow their trademarked catch phrases, and even their images, and make a profit in the process. However he does it, more power to him, because he does it extremely well.

The pace of the performance is at times faster than most American audiences can handle. In the span of a minute, Miller seems can go through five different characters, each with different accents, facial expressions, voices, and non-verbal noises. Unfortunately, sometimes I seemed to detect delay in the transition between different characters’ voices, but this problem may due more to my mind being slow than to Miller’s voice(s). Perhaps there’s also a lag due to the physical limitations of the range of the human throat, especially when switching between characters with radically different speaking styles.

Another impressive feat is the actor’s synchronization with the multimedia; music, video, and sound effects are timed precisely with the performance via a custom DVD. While the use of automated effects may be considered cheating to one-man-show purists, it proves invaluable background information on the scene and setting of the play. Without this visual information, those of us who haven’t read MacBeth in a few years would have had a much harder time keeping up with things.

I’m sure that had I managed to re-read MacBeth before attending the performance last Friday, I’d have been able to catch any number of clever adaptations of the script. MacHomer weaves in and out of the script so much that the viewer at times doesn’t notice when ridiculously out of place lines are inserted into the Elizabethan text. My personal favorite comes at the end of an especially well-metered soliloquy when MacHomer does Homer’s drool-voice and declares “Mmmm…iaambic pentaameter.” It’s funny, not only because it’s true, but because it’s exactly what Homer would say there.

In addition to the play itself, the audience is treated to two additional performances. In the first, the Simpsons sing “We Are the World,” a song that raised awareness for something back in the eighties. This song would be impressive by itself, but after an hour of Simpsons impersonations, the audience is both fully convinced of the man’s Springfield adapting abilities and tired of hearing them. As an encore Miller presents twenty-five of the world’s most annoying recording artists (chosen by him) singing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” While the artists chosen may be a few years out of date, the ones I recognized were extremely well impersonated. The Mick Jagger dance alone makes the whole evening worth it.

Fear the scanner.

2005-05-08T20:30:00.000-06:00

As a reward for being the top comment-poster, I'm posting this eighth grade picture of Leslie and some other people and me taking second place in the Scholar's Bowl tournament. I wish I could say those were simpler times.

Good enough to eat

2005-05-08T19:46:00.000-06:00

or at least to feed on. Now my humble blog can be eaten by various feed readers, including KlipFolio (or at least my copy until I upload it), and various RSS and Atom clients. I'm working on an AvantGo channel as well, for those of you who have wi-fi PDAs and cell phones, or oldskool devices like mine that require hotsyncing before being mobilized. Looks like the AvantGo people want me to pay for distributing content thataway, so you'll have to create a personal channel your own self, but it's not hard.

The theory here is that eventually people will want to know immediately when I've updated this thing. So far, nothing outstanding is coming of it, but I've never been known to do something without overdoing it.

Today hasn't been very productive idea-wise, so if you have a question that you've always wondered about, but your migranes wouldn't let you, send it in to me. So far, ya'll's comments have been pretty sparse, almost as few and far between as my employment history.

From the Can't-get-enough-of-myself Department

2005-05-07T21:41:00.000-06:00

Before I lose this link again, here are some tunes I recorded with the Pacific Tech Thursday Swing Band. That's me playing solo trumpet on "Sabor a Mi" and (don't say I didn't warn you) singing on "Put a Lid on It." The first minute or so of "Lid" is brutal, but wait for the scat solo; it should be amusing.

Anyway, the Tide is low again, as they just graduated a half million or so seniors. My sister-to-be-in-law was among them, and looked hip despite her square hat.

I'm all out of inspiration today, although Scott Adams did answer my query. My readers have been silent so far, with the always notable exception of Leslie.

The only good reason for pushing the question on people is in a feeble attempt to push the science vs. religion debate back into the abstract realm where it belongs.

All I've got to look forward to at work now is selling these. The one product in the place where my employee discount doesn't work is, of course, the only one worth buying. Now I have to brainwash myself into believing in the products so I can sell them and not betray my conscience.

Well that was briefly exciting.

2005-05-06T15:42:00.000-06:00

So this headhunter sent me an email about a position for a Ph.D. in LA, making way more money than I'm worth. So I called him, but it turns out they were serious about the Ph.D. thing. He said to call back in 5-10 years.

His first question was easy: "Will you move to L.A. for $100,000, yes or no?" but his second question "How many years experience do you have?" was tough.

I guess it's nice to know my resume looks like a Ph.D.'s. I shoulda gone to grad school.

Cinco de Cinco de Cinco

2005-05-06T02:02:00.000-06:00

That 5-5-5 deal makes me want some Arby's. Anyway, I went dancing with some Samfordites after swing. One of them wasn't 21, so we were stuck going to Banana Joe's. Fun though. I think I contributed to the delinquency of a Baptist, but that's hard not to do these days.

Oh, I had a epiphaninni today (that's an observation that would be an epiphany if it weren't so stupid). What I noticed was that people used to watch TV shows to live vicariously through characters they could never hope to become, like Superman, or Donna Reed, or Captain Kirk. Now, I find my aspirations lowered to the point that I get excited for people who manage to clean out their basement and have a garage sale. What's sad is, watching those shows makes me feel like I've accomplished something, substituting their successful projects for my own incomplete ones. Sorta like how porn works (from what I've heard).

Well I for one can't wait for the next 05/05/05. A party like this only comes every hundred years. Unless Mexico comes up with another fake holiday in the interim.

I'm gonna go ahead and schedule a party for 06/06/06. Ya'll are all invited.

Update

2005-05-05T13:21:00.000-06:00

Looks like all that time on the cutting edge made me sharp enough after all. I'm a bona fide, employed Image Sharpener.

The coolest perk is an excuse to wear all black.

Sorry if the whole hypertext-subtext device is getting old, but it's just a really concise way to write multiple threads at once, and is a pretty good description of what's going on in my head.

Another reason to love the 'loft.

2005-05-05T11:41:00.000-06:00

It looks like my day-0ld externally-imposed aspiration of being a grounded flyboy has come to naught. Turns out you have to be off all antidepressants for a year before you can be considered for OCS. That and you need a GPA of 2.5 (regardless of where you got it). The military is probably the only institution that can ask questions about mental health in an interview and get away with it, although I guess technically they never inquired into why I was prescribed the stuff...

Still no answer from the Great Minds on the Hole & My Soul question. We may never know for sure. Sorta like the cat and butter problem: if you affix a piece of bread to the back of a cat, with the butter side facing away from the cat, and then drop the cat-pastry from a tall cliff, how does it land? A cat has to land on its feet, and the bread would have to land butter side down. The guy who asked me this one was of the opinion that the cat and toast just hovered in midair indefinitely. I think the kitty would probably eat the bread eventually, and then fall gently to land on its feet.

Oh, yay, I only lost one week of unemployment, so I'm getting paid for doing this after all. Who'd'a thunk?

There's a new toy at Amazon.com that counts instinces of statistically improbable phrases, which tend to characterize the author's style. Unfortunately, not enough clever authors have sinded on yet to make it worthwhile. Wodehouse and Adams would be interesting to see.

Sharper Image hasn't gotten back to me yet. Maybe the background check came up with some fuzziness. Imagine that. I'm not sure what turned off Radio Shack, but I don't really wanna work there anyway. I just don't have the heart to sell any poor schmuck a cell phone.