Mondays are Mondays and I had a slight mishap with the medicine I take every day. If I screw up, my stomach hurts all day long. It feels like there’s gas building up, but it never seems to end until much later in the day. It sure didn’t help my productivity at work today. Plus, I had a headache all last night and I woke up with it as well. And it was hot and humid most of the night.
Lots of complaining, or lots of things to complain about. That’s what I expect on a Monday.
I knew it wasn’t just me being nerdy when I told my sister I might go to the gym and she said, “But it’s such a nice day. You should stay in and read a book.” That’s mainly what I ended up doing, and one of the reasons I don’t like starting books like that. I end up reading them all day long. Well, I did wash the cars (like I hate doing) because the windows were getting dusty and it was getting hard to see when the glare hit them during the commute. During the summer the school yard dries out and the wind blows all the dust from the field up to the house. When there’s any moisture on the cars, like dew, the dust sticks to it and you can imagine what happens. The cars have a film of dirt on them. In any case, weekends aren’t all that exciting here.
I got my new battery (there was a recall) and I think I hear some of the noises that are supposed to require the intervention of AppleCare warranty support, but I can’t really tell. Maybe I’ll take it in. I’m not sure.
I got back from work today and I took a little nap. I think it was a little nap, anyway, but it may have been quite long. I heard another rumor today from my old boss who is very, very well connected. Two more rounds of layoffs, he says. We’ll see how that goes.
And besides that, it was another boring Friday. Watched lots of TV after getting up from a nap. What would you expect?
Sometime in the past I said I’d post a picture of Dave the Trainer. He doesn’t look like my sister thought he’d look (she imagined a tall blonde dude) but here he is.
You can’t tell by the picture, but his biceps are ginormous while mine are still quite puny. He usually has a very serious look at the gym, but you can probably see that he’s quite silly. For example, a conversation at the gym:
Dave: Wow, Ms. X is looking quite hot lately. I’d do her after I had a few beers.
Me: I’d do her after she had a few beers.
I’m not condoning anything illegal here, I’m just saying the judgement which needs impairing wouldn’t be mine.
I was also thinking of other things that make women seem more attractive to me. Women driving Audis and Beemers do nothing for me, but I saw some woman get into an old 70’s Dodge Dart and that kind of got me going.
So far it sounds like my preference in women is tall and driving a hoopty. I wonder what that says about me.
So I figure close to no one is reading this, and that’s just insulting to the several of you who go to the trouble of starting a web browser or whatever the kids do nowadays to access the intarweb, when I got a message from SOMEONE AT MEGACORP. I am in such trouble. My co-workers (all bazillion of them) should not know what evil lurks in the heart of this man. Well, I’m sort of a “man.” And I must have some sort of heart, since something makes this thudding noise when I’m trying to get to sleep at night and I’m pretty sure it’s not a off-balance washing machine. Nobody does laundry that often.
Anyway, I’m in so much trouble that I should just come out and say again, I LIKE TALL WOMEN. I ask almost no one out, of course, so that means I do a lot of looking and not much else. You can see the tall ones from further away. Or is that farther away? That’s one I keep screwing up. In any case, SOMEONE I KNOW went out on some sort of SECRET DATE with a dude who is SHORTER THAN SHE IS. (She’s not all that tall, by the way.) Does that mean I can go out with women who are, say, 6’3″? One can only dream.
OK, so once upon a time, I was an honorary Jew at school. I only ate at the Kosher Kitchen once, and I even had to ask if I had to do any singing because I didn’t know any of the traditions. Heck, I’m barely a Japanese Buddhist if I’m anything at all. Anywway, I’m sure Mel Gibson hates me for other reasons, like I don’t believe in his religion and all.
So let me list the bad news and I’ll get on with the other stuff. Some of these items are from last week.
I’m convinced that there’s other things on the list, but I can’t remember what they are.
My big excitement for the day was talking to my dream girl at the gym. I’d rather just fantasize about her, because she’s in her 30’s and I’m sure she’s got some idea of what sort of guy she wants in her life and that would means NO NERDS. Well, no nerds who are contemplating giving a half-decent job the middle finger and going back to school for a fifth degree. Maybe a JD or an MPH this next time. Oh, and the conversation was just, “How are you?” “Fine, how are you?” “Fine.”
Yeah, I know, just like Junior High school. But I didn’t go to Junior high school, just K-8 elementary school and then Benson Polytechnic High School with lots of gearheads and very few girls.
Got nothing on this Monday besides going to work and having hardly anyone return my emails. Kind of pathetic, but there’s a lot of open source software out there that just is too complicated for my brain to figure out quickly, so I ask questions. When nobody answers me, I have to make up answers.
Also, my boss gave me the stink-eye today, so who knows what’s happening with me or my job.
So there you go, another day in the life of a high-tech goofus. Now if I could only figure out WHY I got an SSL certificate for my web site. You can probably read by blog with https:// something-or-another, but it’s not like any of it should be secret.
Well, I suppose I did a couple of hours of gardening including shoveling the output of the wood chipper, cutting branches, starting up the wood chipper, and then shoveling the new output of the wood chipper. Not great planning, that.
But after all the chipping and eating lunch, I wanted to take a nap. And that nap ended up being a couple of hours long! I suppose it might have been the weather. It was 103°F last Sunday, and only 71°F today. I was even thinking of going to the gym, but I figure the shoveling was as close as I got.
I spent most of the day in Lake Zero, putatively repairing my old explorer post advisor’s computer. He needed to access some ham radio devices, and get a beat up old digital camera working. I think we succeeded in most of the tasks.
This evening I attended a birthday party for Melissa, who is married to a guy I’ve known since before kindergarten. He lives just down the street, in a house he bought from his mom and then remodeled. It’s her second 39th birthday, and I got her some flowers.
I had to get kicked out when the party was officially over. I spent a lot of time talking to his relatives, since I’ve know the guy for 38+ years. But I had selfish thoughts about the flowers I bought his wife, and how, somehow, He owes me. He makes a bunch more money than I do, and is a Harvard MBA internet millionaire and CEO of yet another internet company. I had to go walking all over the neighborhood looking for an open florist (even asking the owners of my local bicycle shop:
You’re married guys, where do you buy flowers?
Guy 1: I don’t do flowers.
Guy 2: I don’t do flowers.
Some help they were.)
I did the following calculation:
Which amounts to:
Or, in other words, No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.
Anyway, it was a good time, and while describing my life with my parents and being an Asian son I quoted my co-worker who said I was a menace to society. Then I found out that this quote is often attributed to Brigham Young:
Any young man who is unmarried at the age of twenty-seven is a menace to the community.
Fifteen years of menacing society and still going strong!
Heh.
First, let me tell you that I sent some heated emails today, because I work in Linux Standards. Well, I can back up and say I work with Linux ANYTHING and you should figure that heated emails are probably par for the course. I had to get very blunt and rude because the German guy I was corresponding with just plain doesn’t get it, and if he keeps up his behavior while I expect him to be a normally functioning human being, I’m going to get fired. Anyway, he seems to like forwarding my emails around without thinking of how it would affect me, so I shouldn’t have said, “You’re annoying me to the point of wanting to give megacorp the middle finger and walking out.”
I felt much better after seeing the Schwag Storm and going to the gym. (The Schwag Storm occurs when the exhibit hall is being dismantled and everyone dumps all the goodies they don’t want to take home. Including books that people were selling!
Anyway, the new sign of geekdom is that after 20 years I got my membership card to the Tech Coop again, so I’m back getting discounts on things with the MIT (or, ugh, Harvard) logo! Membership costs $1/year, and there was a time after graduation where I told them I wanted nothing to do with MIT or The Coop. Now if I could only afford those things with logos from my alma mater. Right now I have to save up for my impending doom.
I left work early to hit the Open Source Convention (i.e. geek day number 2) and it was much more productive than I thought it would be. I met old acquaintances, old teachers, and several people who I talked to about work. In fact, the people I talked to about work helped me understand some more of the stuff I’m supposed to be doing. It was worth going, and I’m going again tomorrow.
Now I’ve forgotten what else I was thinking about. Certainly not squirrals.
Not only did I wear my MIT hat, but I also watched Eureka today. I like all the fake geek talk.
I heard this story today from a co-worker that his buddy used to ride the TriMet bus (our public transportation) and had the pleasure of sitting next to a couple of meth-heads and overheard their conversation. The best I ever did was sat behind a guy writing a manifesto that included:
Ok, so I’m not quite sure about that list, but I’m sure I have it written down SOMEWHERE.
But I’m getting off the topic of what was overheard. The meth-heads were going to go to OHSU for a medical study to map the effects of methamphetamines on the brain. One of the guys was saying crack screws you up, but meth makes you clairvoyant. His plan was to go to the cafeteria at the hospital and pick up the residents there. My co-worker then said ridiculed the clairvoyance of the meth-head, asking, “How likely is it that a doctor in residency is going to go out with a jobless meth addict?”
A hell of a lot more likely than with a Software Engineer from Megacorp.
