January 31, 2004
Shut Down
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O |
Ran into Natalie, mini-ex-squeeze at Olive Garden… she was working. Gave me a big hug, talked my ear off, told me to come back and talk with her after dinner..
After dinner …
Riz :chatter
Natalie :chatter
Riz :”So, do you want to hang out later?”
Natalie :”… (5 sec pause) Nah. I’m not feeling well.”
this of course, begs the clarification, I didn’t mean today, later; but later later, but after previous compliactions from her, I remembered
a) the fact that before she never gave me a clear direction either.
b) that girls that really like me, want me to ask for their phone number/kiss them, etc; are damned obvious about it. You can TELL when someone likes you (with 90% of women)…
So I let it be. We hugged again good bye, and I split, slightly embarrased, but remembering thought B and all the stuff I had learned about how the important act was the trying (and not being shy), instead of the actual response. :)
Rk
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January 25, 2004
Sex
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S |
First, an away message I read today.
Auto response from **: I think I’ve finally, definitively come to the conclusion that music is better than sex.
My first thought was … ” Whats wrong with the sex you’ve been having … or what music are you listening to? (and can you send me the MP3s) “.
Then I realized, at the point, I agree. I haven’t really come to a decision on Sex yet, haven’t had enough experiences to see if it is the phenominal thing that I’ve been told (constantly) that it is.
Last month I was watching the “Two Become One” Spice Girls music video and just freaking out about how pretty and … well… girly, the girls are. And they are! Little actions, the way they bat their eyes… and it isn’t these girls, its girls in general!
Someone smart is going to see that I use girls constanlty and rarely say Women. My reason is is that I still consider myself a ‘boy’ and don’t see it mutually exclusive with being a ‘man,’ and that I’ve just left a period of life where the word ‘girl’ is the generic term. The rest of you will have other rationale, I’m sure.
Finally, I’m going to scream. Listening to “Thats why they call it the blues” is great and all, especially, whenever I’m playing the Elton’s Hits CD (I don’t just queue it up otherwise); but I pause whenever I hear “Rolling like Thunder … Under the Covers..” …
I want to roll like thunder…
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Become a Google Adwords Guru
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G |
Seriously, one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen… web advertising at its best!
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Tokens
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G |
Those really cool tokens I bring to play with me.
I missed the darksteel pre-release :(
Forget the box (overvalued the week before it would be easily obtainable, allowing me to sell it for $100+) or anything else, I’m annoyed about why I missed it…
I’m sick again.
Similar symptoms to Uzbekistan, and caryring on from being sick on Wednesday… I hope its not nearly as long term this time, and I fluctuate up and down daily… Heather is sick too, so its possible we both had a long-incubation time bug, but we doubt it. I drove about half the way to the release, until I almost crashed cause I was trying to not vomit … turned around and came home.
Seriously, not the coolest way to spend a Saturday.
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January 22, 2004
This just made my day.
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T |
Oh, I’ve been sick for the past few days :( Vomiting, but not as bad as Uzbekistan. Bad Chinese food. Not sure if I have a job now; stories to tell, no energy to tell em.
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January 18, 2004
', "\n"; echo '\n"; } } if (!($n)) { echo "No referrals yet
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The Hubble
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S |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Hubble Space Telescope will be allowed to degrade and eventually become useless, as NASA changes focus to President Bush’s plans to send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond, officials said Friday
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January 17, 2004
Left Right and Center
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N |
First, when candidates that are lucky to get 1% of the vote say “When I am President…,” I want to gag.
Came home from FNM and saw my dad watching Bill Mahers HBO show, with Ron Silver (who I have a new found respect for), Darrell Issa and Al Sharpton.
The kicker for me was when Sharpton made a jab at Issa… “since you were so happy to recall a governer who put California into a deficit, why don’t you help me with Pres. Bush…”
Chirst Almighty, Apples and Oranges.
Do I wish Bush was as fiscally conservative as I had though when I voted for him? Yes. Is the deficit (mainly) his fault? I don’t think so. There has been a deficit in the federal budget since the Civil War…. thats 150+ years of Presidents in the same situation… on top of which, the economy (and therefore tax revenue) dive of the post-Clinton era (plus 9/11) can’t be blamed on Bush… Its insane… criticizing him for the budget (or heralding Clinton’s fiscal policy (which was good, I’ll admit) as the only reason the budget was balanced) is like claiming that Herbert Hoover was a great president because he kept us out of war…
More on whether going into Iraq was right or not, even for humanitarian reasons… just one thing… Americans don’t like to go places to help others… we’ll write a check, donate stuff, but we don’t like sending out boys and girls abroad (OH WAIT, THATS WHAT WE PAY THEM FOR!) —- sorry, a little bit of pent up anger there.
Anyhow bed time, more tomorrow.
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January 11, 2004
Quotage
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C |
“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or shrinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might have otherwise be used to make the masses to comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intellegent.”
“Women, go your ways! Seek not to beguile us of our imperial privileges.
Content yourself with your little feminine trifles—your babies, your
benevolent societies and your knitting—and let your natural bosses do
the voting. Stand back—you will be wanting to go to war next. We will
let you teach school as much as you want to, and we will pay you half
wages for it, too, but beware! we don’t want you to crowd us too much.”
- Mark Twain, Letter to St. Louis Missouri Democrat, March, 1867
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Books
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A |
Amazon.com: Books: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl : A Nancy Chan Novel
Amazon.com: Books: Code Complete
Amazon.com: Books: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Amazon.com: Books: The Emperor of Scent : A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses
Amazon.com: Books: Bachelor Girl : The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century
Amazon.com: Books: A Round-Heeled Woman : My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance
Amazon.com: Books: The Assassins
Amazon.com: Books: India : A Wounded Civilization
Amazon.com: Books: The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex: The Most Complete Sex Manual Ever Written
Amazon.com: Books: Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet (Kodansha Globe)
Amazon.com: Books: The Runaway Jury
Amazon.com: Books: The Rainmaker
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Mixed Nuts
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I |
Arrived at home at 4 last morning, was playing Majora’s Mask with Brian … (He had the walkthrough in hand ;p ) … Got there after FNM, which was cool. A friend made a 
Scepter Bounce Megrim deck at the last minute, and another made something similar to Adrian’s LD Ponza deck, which did decently…
Today was a very late wakeup, a quick venture to get the mail and a muffin when I got my grades (finally!)
Good news … The Discrete math class I was sure I was going to fail… “B-“
Bad news, didnt do better than a B for unknown reasons in any class.
I’m talking about classes where I defined the curve on the midterms, so I’m not sure what type of mathematics were used to compute it.
Mum just returned to home then, but was underwhelmed at the news; shrinks and her own experience tell her that positive reinforcement is important, plus, just as importantly, its nice to be nice. Dad was similar, and he ranted about other stuff that really pissed me off… Mom came and apologized right after though so we cuddled and talked and watched Ellen’s standup.
Ellen is amazing… I never paid attention to her visual expressionisim before..
Day floated running errands, cleaning off invalid MP3s from the iPod, sorting my Snapfish photos … lamenting that I’m not shooting as much as I used to, etc.
Evening was pizza with parents and a few board games with Brian and Nichole and Omar… its Omars last day with us. I’m constantly amazed about how open B/N are with sexuality and how they are game for anything … If I bring a girl with me, there can be fun had in that house; hell if I know if its something I’d be up for or not.
Driving to B/Ns had me thinking in part of Robin, as I usually do on that drive. I’m taking a significant, if not permanent, hiatus from caring where the fuck she is, but I still think at times… I visualized seeing her, which lead to me kissing her hand, which lead to me thinking which was more romantic, kissing a hand or blowing a kiss, which lead to me thinking about blowing kisses, which lead to High School.
I adored Shelly Shelby in high school. Whether or not it was in a dating sense, or something I was fully aware of, I had a massive crush on her; without even knowing it. She was my somewhat reluctant platonic prom date, but well before that, we were in 9th grade English together; and we were going through Romeo and Juilet scene by scene… we assumed that the teach would assign the makeout couple in the class to play the balcony scene, but it ended up being Shelly and I.
Now, you’ve got to put this into context. Take me, remove weight, height, social progression, tact, and pretty much ever social and physical aspect I have; and you have me at 9th grade. I was bright red, even with brown skin, during the entire play; my stuttering was at an all time high, and … I blew those kisses to her.
I hadn’t ever kissed a girl; what was I to do?! I can’t imagine how it would be if this was the case now, or if I had been at all adept then, but yeah, thats like the fourth most embarassing story that comes to mind… anyhow, that train of thoughts came through…
B/ns game playing turned disasterous, more on that in another blog, its just overly competitive and overly sensitve people; my annoyance when people bitch, some hipocracy(sp?) on my part, but thats for later.
Driving home, I shedded the anger I had, esp. when Nichole gave me a big apologetic hug as I split … Listed to Shanna Easton’s “Telephone” for no apparent reason and was again reminded how much it applied to Serena and I for a time… then my mind wandered… and I thought of …
HEATHER!
My BEST FRIEND is coming up here Tuesdayish night and staying till Thursday morning… shes in town… you could not understand HOW HAPPY I WAS when I remembered…. The rest of the drive was filled with 80ish happy songs :)
Got home and checked Hot-Or-Not, which is becoming something I’m doing again, even though Seth is probably right with his opinions, and I should be wary… Two emails from the emails I sent out today (10 matches, didn’t get around to emailing em till tonight), both seeming quite charming, one very excited to talk to me (hell if I know why), but just nice things said and letters to respond to …
So yeah, this up and down day ended up.
EDIT: Emailed Helen, trying to mend bridges, not sure if its gonna work; but ‘twould be nice if it did.
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January 10, 2004
Freestyle
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I |
(Partially because of a TAL story talking about one of the players…)
Its almost impossible to find, nikebasketball no long has it for download, so I found it on some site that happens to be a High School site… ;p
Freestyle - 2:30sec
New Freestyle - 2:30sec
The antiquated Nike Basketball site.
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January 08, 2004
Beauticians
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I |
I complimented a Beautifican, and tried to flirt.
Never ever a good idea. I’m tempted to write it off to “An industry that focuses on beauty is just one that doesn’t look to personality in a person”, but I’m past the point of painting THAT wide of a brush. (Do I still believe that that applies to most people in the field though… maybe. who knows.) She had nice hair and I mentioned it to Jeanie while she was cutting me, and Jeanie suggested that I tell her. The hair salons always been filled with just quite good looking women, and while I used to think that attractive people tended toward this field, I now think that they take more care of themselves BECAUSE they are in this field… Ever known a dentist with really bad teeth?
Anyhow, I told her afterwards and her first response was “Oh okay.” No excitement or any pleasure that someone had something nice to say. No biggie, but I violated my rule :)
I’m gonna stop by again just in case.
Oh, another two girl stories. During my really boring Stats class yesterday, the girl to my right w/ cute glasses pulled out her old palm pilot, which led to a conversation in whispers. We talked more during the class break, but I think my voice cracked a bit when she mentioned her husband, so I might have been a bit too obviously embarrased after that ;p I really need to start looking at ring fingers… but there are a lot of girls that just … well… wear rings for the hell of it.
Another was a girl in the elevator whos backpack was spilling open… we chatted for about ten seconds after I mentioned, and it wouldn’t be at all noteworthy except that as she got off, and I wished her a nice day, she smiled me a massive genuine smile. Needless to say, I wrote down basic characteristics and the time on the elevator, just in case.
How do other people meet girls, because it seems to be a constant comedy of errors and failures for me, which I dont mind, at least right now ;p
Ok, time to continue @ work. theres plenty of insane things going on here, maybe I’ll blog about em later.
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January 07, 2004
Site Stuff
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I |
Traffic isn’t much, I know HeatherW and Serena read it … and thats it.
Seriously. Got a hit from Adelanto a few days ago so a co-worker probably saw it. Lots of google searches for Pakistani stuff, This American Life stuff, people searching for warez torrents, Seth when I prod him to..
It could be said that I’m suffering from a lack of friends that give a damn. I prefer to call it that my friends aren’t that blog-savvy.
Either way, it sucks. I’m at the point that I’m just really going to try to avoid looking at traffic at all. Seriously. Posting code ideas and random crap, but enjoying myself and making the site look cool…
Anyhow, hospital work is still a mess, but at this point I’ve got 3/4 of the classes I need… with any luck, back to UCLA next quarter. Politics at the hospital are nuts ..
We played sealed last night with … wait for it … Mirrodinx4, 1xOnslaught, 1xScourge. No, I’m serious. Details later.
Working on a timeline for work now and a comprehensive “what will it take to get a universal login script with audit for domain and non-domain machines to work” … anyknow know of a programming language for basic scripting that works in w95 -> winxp … WSH is out, it doesn’t have 95 … perl comes to mind, but then each computer would ahve to have perl installed. .. and I can’t make a standalone C++ app ‘cause they need to be able to change it after I leave.
:thunkage:
Oh, this TOTALLY FREAKS ME OUT.
![sf20040102[1].gif](http://www.geekymedia.com/sf20040102[1].gif)
(Mainly cause its totally true. I hate girls. Today anyhow. Not really though.)
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January 04, 2004
Link Cleanup
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S |
A standalone Robot…
I know I’ve heard this somewhere… I didn’t want to google it, trying to remember…Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, biblical?
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor… real Wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies.
Venkman: Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos.
Winston:The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together… mass hysteria!
Ok, the really Beautiful Girl I linked to, was, in fact, Audrey Hepburn. With Short Hair. God I wish I was…. you know…. alive then.
Thanks to the actual Grrl for setting me straight. Good for you that you finally discovered The American President. Time to watch SportsNight and The West Wing (dear God, not the new episodes). Her site is quite cool, and if I’ll perma link when I get around to updating the templates. (Her blogtree is broken, and I don’t know what a blog tree is, so I’ll see if I’m on it when she fixes it).
The Referrers and the combination of comments and trackbacks is quite cool… Time to steal some design ideas :)
Stuff on LI Batterys, with HeatherW in mind. (and my iPod)
Batteries in a Portable World
Apple Battery Engineers How to prolong lithium-based batteries @ BatteryUniversity
I’ve been reading my site logs recently, now that I setup something other than Seth’s apparently non-existant logging system… Granted its only the main page (actually a big flaw now that I think about it), but I get SO much traffic from search engines ;p … oh, that and people searching to download This American Life… I really should post my MP3s of TAL.
Wow this is amazingly cool…
Of course, if you want some serious rumorological craziness in the TV realm, faithful viewer Donovan Doak points out a macosx.com article chock full of “exclusive insider information” on the “iBox,” a hard drive-based standalone personal video recorder allegedly slated to ship from Apple sometime in early 2004. Get this: we’re talking about a $400-$600 VCR-on-steroids that looks like the illegitimate offspring of a Power Mac G5 and an iPod and supposedly packs AirPort Extreme, a 10/100 Ethernet port, FireWire and USB ports, a full-fledged G3 processor, and a SuperDrive. You plug your TV into the video ports, you throw it on your wired or wireless network, and bam, you can schedule recordings from any Mac in the house (or log in remotely from any system on the Internet). It runs iTunes and iPhoto and can stream songs and pictures from your Macs or store it on its local 120 GB hard disk for all to share. It has a stripped-down version of iDVD so you can burn your recordings to disc right on the unit itself. If you want, you can also watch iBox-recorded shows on any of your networked Macs. Oh, and you can control it from your Bluetooth phone.Hmm… this is kind of disturbing
When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up “free speech zones” or “protest zones,” where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.
There is buzz that Jobs will announce a $100US Ipod with 2Gig storage at MacWorld…. 800 songs or so… That’d be quite cool. I still love mine :Hugs his iPod: (I was actually hugging it there btw), but more people having them can only lead to good things :)
Oh, I’ve started browsing Hot Or Not again. You know I’m down when I start doing stupid shit like that.
Its weird. I have about a month and a half of good days, then two weeks of lousy ones… Just odd, thats all.
Is Opera better than myIE2?
More…
DVD-Jon wins new legal victory
Norway’s most famous computer whiz got an early Christmas present on Monday. An appeals court in Oslo upheld Jon Lech Johansen’s earlier acquittal on all counts of alleged copyright violations.
Oh, a story via my dad.
Turns out that DirectTV (or Dishnetwork) spent $30M on their new “unhackable” generation of auth cards… It seems that a lawyer from one of their lawfirms leaked all the confidential details on the net… its already been hacked.
I’m NOT AT ALL a fan of Nasa’s homepage containing a Flash app, even if its reasonably short and quiet. That being said, Spirit landed in one piece, so I’m willing to forgive them for it. YAY FOR EXPLORATION :) … Explaining how a probe slingshots around a gravity source was interesting. The fact that Spirit only has a 15W transmitter still floors me.
Nasa’s doing good on PR at the moment, with a homepage article talking about the advanced that NASA has brought to everyday life… and a cool thing on lizards. :) They got a bit of a comet too!
Finally, ISOhunt released a system whereby Torrents can be linked to a dynamic server address, making “dead tracker” and “dead file server” problems a lot less likely as this gets deployed.
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January 03, 2004
Location Location Location
A
CME Mapper @ N 34.503909 W 117.31924, 32 m/p
Heres where Victorville is.
Online sat. databases are like the coolest thing.
I’m looking to us to add myself to GeoURL, and The World As a Blog.
I feel a sudden urge to contribute or make something. I’ll finish my fax spam database today or tomorrow… not like I’m making the world a better place by making it easier for the ‘rents to fax broadcast, but… you do what you can do.
The exact loc of my house.
Project Locate IP address, to help me when I’m reading my newfangled server logs.
(That being said, it says my IP is in Irwindale so…)
OOH theres an MT plugin! MTLocation! Theres a lotta crap to read later.
This girl is gorgeous btw. I need to read more of the site, of course, though.
By the way, I really need to work on the look of this site.
And, you know, start posting stuff worth reading.
I’ve spent the last five minutes watching blog entries as they come through.
This is so amazingly fascinating. What makes other people so interesting?
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Yay to Random Sites
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W |
I’ve been annoyed about my hard drive (primary) running as a PIO drive instead of UDMA, explaining the CRAP performance and system slowdowns when I do basic things, like play mp3s. Just found out how to fix it (while I was on hold with MS Professional support) …
Yay GOOGLE!
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January 02, 2004
State of Employment
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W |
First, working at a corporation larger than 15 people has always eroded my sense of well-being. I see stupidity, selfishness, pettyness and snobbery only equally matched by the cliques in my high school.
Examples of things that randomly freak me out.
* I couldn’t get my ID badge last week cause the person who did them sent out an email that they wouldn’t do them. Never mind that the CEO of the company walked down with me to get the badge, it couldn’t be done. HR doesn’t do the badges, security does. HR doesnt know how to. No one else knows how to.
* My boss finally went to his boss to ask for an extension for my work time. I, of course, wanted this to become a perm part time job, which I am both qualified for and would do well at. Furthermore, his boss is the guy who got me this gig in the first place and a family friend for about ten years. He got a “keep him till next week, then we will see.” … Other people came into the office while my boss was there. Figures eh? Can’t even get a straight answer, and I can’t plan for the future when I dont know if I’m going to be here next week… do I take on a large project if it means it’ll be half done and unsalvagable if I have to leave…?
* One of the people interrupting the aforementioned meeting was someone attempting to get a pager for a doctor. Given that its a hospital, and doctors being what they are, you’d think this would be an easy job… Nope. There is ONE person who assigns pagers, orders and distrubtes them, and … wait for it… shes out for four weeks. The hospital is pager-less (for new pagers anyhow) for four weeks. And this place makes many millions of dollars a year. Go figure.
* There is a lady who cleans the fake flowers on the second terrace level. This is a hospital that was recently bleeding money out of every orifice until the original owner came back and saved it, and they have someone spending time cleaning fake flowers. Mind you, I don’t mean brushing them, but going through each leaf petal… a ten foot long by one foot width patch took her a half hour.
* The help desk lady here argues with the IT techs that they don’t move asset tags properly when they move computers. They wont even leave her notes and she complains that shes been labeled the ‘bitch’ because she continually demands that she does it. (Mind you, she probably the lowest in the org chain here) The bosses agree with her but can’t force the guys to keep up with it (or choose not to.)
* By the way, would she run into similar problems if she wasn’t a woman? (Or if she wasn’t the lease knowledgble of the people working her?) … It doesnt really seem fair. I’ve suggested ideas just as unpopular and haven’t gotten nearly that much resistance. I really do wonder how much of it is gender here.
* We use many expensive licenses of a certain product that could instead be replaced by a freeware product at very little implementation cost, but the guy who administrates the first product would go ballistic, and the boss has already said “I don’t want to hear any more about this.” (This apparently before I came around.) I’ve written up a doc detailing why we should switch and gave it to a manager (below my boss, above me) and we are going through it. I went to his office to ask him how this third draft looked, and after a bit I realized that hes wants me to take it straight to management. I’m flabbergasted, because, while switching IS the right thing to do, I’m not sure that it’s worth the trouble for either of us that would result… and I see the fallacy. I’m used to doing things whether they piss people off or not, but I’ve never gone over the BOSSes head, but thats mainly because I normally super-respect my bosses. Aaron and Barry were amazing and Barry’s my definition of an ideal boss, as far as I’m concerned. So yeah, I’m freaked out about this.
* Speaking of the manager, he commented about me staying for (at least) one week more, “yeah I’d like to see you around.” I apparently bring energy, knowledge, good ideas along, but mixed with some poor directions. Specifically, my naivete’, and yeah I can agree. I am nothing, if not naive. And I damn well plan to remain so. For me, passing through naivete means becoming embittered. His good comments, were of course, massively apprecaited.
* Dale Carnegie did me some good. I can ask things of co-workers that I normally couldn’t ask by couching it just right, suggest some ideas BECAUSE they assume I’m nieve and get something through the door that I couldn’t before.
A teacher taught me about the 80/20 (or is it 90/10) rule. 20% of all the people do 80% of the work. Its so amazingly true, but I hate thinking so because I usually put myself among the 20%, deprioritze manual and non-skilled labor, and completely write off upper management. I’m wrong for that. There are administrators who do really work hard (instead of thinking that they are working hard), guys moving boxes and keyboard typists that take a pride in their work. Its just… if you aren’t creating something, what do you have to be proud in?
I’ve forgotten how much training I’ve had in being a leader. I’m not saying I’m good at it, I’m just saying I’ve been in that position a lot. From UCLAtv, to RYLA, to watching Aaron, Barry, and Hall, to directing peers at Comedy World or even personal ventures. I like to be in charge, and sometimes I actually earn the respect of my peers. I’ll be damned if I know.
Theres this inner fear thats been building slowly over the years… that I’m destined to be a Dilbert Manager.. the fact that I CAN speak manager-speak and relate to the same, could mean that I’m good at bridging the gap, or that I’m destined to become antoehr head of hair. (Dilberts boss chose maangement candidates based on their hairstyle…)
Documentation, by the way, is a knowledge workers best friend. Coders don’t often comment their code because they consider it job security. I just call it stupid. (I could, of course, be wrong.) When I provide flowcharts, documentation and management summaries, I am both given more responsibility/power because they know I’m accountable, and the managers are happy because they can see what I’ve done and am doing. It isn’t that the managers are (necessarily) too dumb to focus on what I’m handing them as far as raw code goes, its that they really don’t have the time. I know Aaron and Barry apprecaited summaries, if for no other reason then I could talk off their ear for an hour in excitement, talking about my current project. Documenting helps me stay focused as well, I’ve got about twenty text files on my desktop detailing thoughts that I might lose later or commenting, etc; explaining all my thoughts to someone or writing a summary on a napkin (search my blog for napkin for the story) lets the Attention problems shine through, and who wants that. Yeah, some time gets wasted on the documentation that could be spent on other things, but there are some advantages. Normally when I’m developing at work, I’m running at double-speed… I need to work at simpler things at times to calm down/re focus. Documentation helps ME focus.
On that, I go to return the PS2, the Treo, and play some Magic!
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Happy New Years
|
I |
By successful, I mean, not letting myself get caught up in the social events and ensuing sadness of the holiday :)
Inital plans included an Indian Music party with the rents; I had really really hoped to do something with Robin, with it being the first time that I was dating someone during New Years… (EDIT: Actually I was with (ex-gf2) ,but I dont recall why we didnt do anything … oh right, her family didn’t know about me ;p ) but not having spoken to her kinda disuadded that. Another plan was the join Brian and Nichole at their friends house, and the third idea was to go to this new bar kinda place that opened in the ville… reminds me of Malones by UCLA, casual and fun (at least when I peaked in.)
I played Final Fantasy X-2 and slept before midnight.
The Indian party turned out to be somewhat of a flop.
I wasn’t in the mood to hang out with anyone.
And the self assigned pressure of being at a bar for New Years, finding a girl (always self imposed pressure), the kiss after the countdown, and being (seemingly) the only guy sipping his drink instead of snogging someone kinda kept me from the bar. That being said, I almost went for one specific reason. My fortune cookie from my New Years Eve dinner read “Wednesday is your lucky day.” … I laughed for about ten minutes straight.
Anyhow. I never liked doing things for New Years.. partially due to the lack of being with someone, but just as much as I don’t see a reason to celebrate. (If you think you don’t really need a reason to celebrate, you have a point.) I tend to be happier sleeping earlier and goofing off New Years Day; which I did.
FF X2 is okay, I almost shut it off many times though as the intrusion of modern day language crept into its lexicon; such Yiddish classics as “Schelpped” and “Kosher as a Pickle” had me furious, for example. FF is in a mixture of a modern and ancient world; fine, I can handle that, and even like it; but bringing colloquilal English is just pushing the line as far as I’m concerned. ” ‘kay ” doesn’t belong in a fantasy game.
Made it to about 1/4 through Chapter 3 of FFX2 until I lost steam; a minor game fluke kept me from abusing a way of making lots and lots of gil, and with a sudden plot twist and confusing directions, I hit save and left.
Watched the West Wing pilot just now … Pilots are a funny thing. You get so much more insight into character development than you do normally, but so many things are off kilter… watch the first episode of ST:TNG, for instance.
Maybe I’ll hit FNM tonight. I want to go see the Producers, and I’m about this close to buying two $25 tickets and showing up outside Robins door 3 hours early Saturday. I’m gonna be persistant, no reason not to be.
Whats up with people I’ve dated thinking of my race primarily, when they think of me. With (ex-gf1) it was “My Third Worlder,” (ex-gf2) “My Little Terrorist” and apparently now I’m a Gentlemen of the East. Fuck If I know why, I’m about as white washed as they come… makes me wonder how much skin color actually lodges in peoples minds… :shakes his head:
All in all its been a nice time… Making $14 or $17/hr at DVMG, with a likely continuion to part time during school; a revised UCLA schedule has me finishing in 3.75 quarters if a) everything transfers okay and b) UCLA lets me change to Comp. Engineering.
Bought and later returned a Tungsten Palm, tried the two device solution with a bluetooth phone and PDA, but I think I’m gonna stick with the Treo.
Whats really cool is that I’ve been in a good mood all this time. Jogging suit, playing games, watching TV and reading isn’t bad for a few days… Only minute hits of depression were in the last hour or so, but a nice orange (look mom, I actually chose fruit instead of chocolate) and a West Wing ep fixed that.
Turns out the reason my computer has shit for performance is that the primary hard drive is being accessed via PIO, not UDMA, explaining the lousy performance and the cpu lockups during access… UDMA bypasses the processor for data retrieval, PIO doesn’t.
Anyhow to everyone, a happy new year to you all. May we strengthen the bonds of friendship that we have, forge others, improve ourselves and our character, overcome some fears, help someone else overcome theirs, and smile more.
-Rizwan
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