Monthly Archives: January 2007

One of the trainers at the gym told me, “Dude, you need some color. Look how white your legs are.” I told him it was to blind my enemies. I spent 12 hours at work today, trying to finish the stuff I said I’d finish. I’m not exactly happy about spending hour after hour in the lab with the guy behind me trying to cough up his lung, but I said it would be done on Thursday and I’m getting close. Thank goodness. Due to the length of my involvement at work, I did little else. However, I can comment on the frontier culture of Portland, where you can wear … Continue reading →

Besides telling a guy who is supposed to be my project lead that he should know what I’m doing and shouldn’t be asking me to describe the project, I had another sign that I should be doing something more agreeable to my personality. I was told that we needed an odd number of samples because we needed to find the median value. What I should have done: Said, “Sir! Yes sir!” and generated an odd numbered set of samples. What I did: I asked a, “Bioinformatics Associate at OHSU,” who is also an, “Adjunct Statistics Instructor at PSU,” if I could just take the middle two values of an even-numbered … Continue reading →

Late today I was told by one of my project leads (there are two) that I have a Thursday deadline. I asked what I needed to finish by the deadline and he told me to ask the other project lead. So I sent out some email. After receiving no reply, I found the other project lead at his desk and asked what the deadline was for. He also had no idea, but he told me that he’d just attended a meeting (with the other project lead) and yes, I did have a deadline. Fortunately for me, before I started sharpening a machete and started muttering to myself, I talked to … Continue reading →

OK, so nothing much has happened, and yet I can make a list of it all. I watched a Korean monster movie with friends, and it was oddly different. Entertainingly oddly different, though. You almost always saw it coming. I saw it with a bunch of comic book artists and I got over my fanboy tendencies to enjoy the movie. I also got my hair cut, which is not a big deal, took a nap, and went on a, “voluntary team building exercise,” which is code for, “went to the titty bars with a bunch of guys from work.” So today I’m really tired. The trip to the bars was … Continue reading →

I was told today that the word on the street is that I’m difficult and hard to work with. This is probably bad for my continued success at Megacorp but, honestly, what did they expect? I have no idea where the complaints are coming from so I can’t rebut anything. I did send out an email that the equipment they gave me to make videos was making things look like crap. I heard the word, “crap,” was thought to be unprofessional. “Looks like hell,” and, “What a pile of shit you gave me to work with,” would probably not have gone over real well either. Ah, well. I guess it … Continue reading →

So what has been happening at work lately is: They tell me to do something, I tell them it’s stupid via email, I tell them it’s stupid in person, then I end up doing what they asked in the first place. One of my problems is that I’m quite emphatic in my resistance to their demands. I really should learn to just jump to step 4. That’s the engineer in me. Especially the MIT engineer in me. I ended up staying late to finish up the thing I was complaining about this time. I’m not so clever. The reasons I pay a personal trainer are myriad, but one of the … Continue reading →

I was talking to my friend Megan today and I made some joke about Lisa Loeb. Not sure why Lisa Loeb popped into my head, but apparently she went to Brown with a neighbor of mine. By neighbor, I mean someone I’ve known since I was in grade school. That was a long time ago. I’ve only been to Brown once, back when I was at MIT, and I remember walking around with my mouth open because some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen were there. I, on the other hand, went to a school populated by troll-like creatures. I remember at one point people used to think … Continue reading →

I never seem to reply to comments but I thought I’d clarify that my recent confusion and aphasia was not due to the influence of NyQuil, but just my shrinking brain. Perhaps it’s due to my lack of sleep, or the stress from work, but who’s to know? (And I should quit calling it aphasia before I get some medical people all excited about a misdiagnosis.) I wonder if watching Scrubs four times a day is reminding me that I never made it into medical school and is depressing me. I heard on NPR that today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. It’s gloomy, the … Continue reading →

I’m beginning to think my mind is going because I’m forgetting words as I’m speaking. No more eloquence when you’re stuttering trying to remember what you were talking about. For example, today I couldn’t think of, “Nyquil.” I remembered it was made by Vicks, I remembered the taste of it, and I remembered it was green, but I couldn’t think of the name of it. Sheesh. Drinking doesn’t make it any better, either. I mix up everyone’s names. Ah, well. Maybe I should learn another language so I can be forgetful multilingually.

It was my buddy Il’s birthday today so last night three of us went out and hit a bunch of strip clubs. I must admit that some were better than others and there was even one that was quite frightening. I can’t remember the name of the scary place. I’ve never been brave enough to enter, and now I know why. I should have been speaking Spanish to go in there. I was frisked as I entered, and while Il and I were the only two Asian guys in a lot of the places, Andrew doubled the population of white guys in there. There was one white woman in the … Continue reading →

I was in a piss-poor mood this morning and it only got worse when I found out that “my” test computers at Megacorp were altered while I was gone. It was the kind of day where I used a certain word quite often, in the sentences, “KISS MY …,” and, “SHOVE IT UP YOUR …” Fortunately my mood got a bit better after I got in a meeting and let everyone know how I was feeling. Several people in charge agreed that I didn’t need to work around the clock this weekend and I only had to promise a bunch of stuff by Friday. Even better, I made it to … Continue reading →

The snow is melting and the sledding hill is a muddy mess, but there’s still a lot of trash left. This is the cardboard people left at the sledding hill. Meghann, you’re on my list. (Her name was on some of the boxes.) I gathered all the cardboard and put it in our recycling bin. Here’s the random trash people left. The pink bag on the left is “Mini’s” pink “My Little Pony” backpack and has three dolls and a small dollhouse inside. I took it to my next door neighbor’s house on the off chance that it was his daughter’s. I left it there because it would be weird … Continue reading →