I’m trying to post from my PC, which I only use because it’s all I got. The keyboard I’m using is this old eMachines POS that I got back in the 90’s and really, I’m not sure why I still have the thing. It was the new hotness last Christmas, but now it’s just a computer. I built up a “game machine” but I never did play any games on it. Come to think of it, I still have two unopened games for the PSP I no longer have. Huh.

I didn’t have to spend too long on hold to do all my insurance stuff for the break-in, and I’m not exactly as upset as I probably should be. Most of the stuff is replaceable. There are deductibles and other nonsense, so I’m not going to get full replacement cost on anything, but at least I’ll get some money for some of the things. And I was just thinking that I had too many watches. I didn’t want to just throw them out, but I was wondering what to do with them all. Ah, well.

Thursday, at work, I noticed that I couldn’t get to my laptop over the internet. I thought about it for a second, whether I had it in “power saving” mode, and I realized that someone probably stole it. Unfortunately, I was right.

Sometime during the day, between 8:30AM and 3PM, a burglar came and threw a brick through the glass in the back door and broke into the house. They also pulled off and broke a storm window, but didn’t go through that window. They stole 3 Mac laptops which were all the working Macs in the house. They also took my mom’s old coins, a handheld ham radio, and a bunch of wristwatches including the one my dad used to wear. I can replace most of the things they took except for the novelty wristwatches (including an In-N-Out anniversary wristwatch) and the watch my dad used to wear. You can guess what I miss the most.

The police came to take a report, and they even sent someone to check for fingerprints. I figured they wouldn’t bother, and they didn’t find anything smooth enough to take fingerprints from, but it was nice that they sent someone. And a friend who is a contractor came by to help me board up the broken door window.

I’m fairly sure I have a recent backup of my laptop, so I should be OK there. Unfortunately, I got my MacBook Pro on a developer’s discount and replacing just one laptop is going to cost, without the discount, at least $2500 + $330 for the memory. The ham radio only gets used once a year at the Portland Marathon, so I can just quit volunteering for that and I won’t need to replace it. Or I can just borrow a radio from my buddy Greg. And I had too many watches anyway.

Still, what a pain in the ass.

I guess I wasn’t too busy, but I wasn’t too happy, either. Someone threw a brick through the back window and broke into the house. So far I can tell they took 3 Mac laptops, my mom’s coin collection, a PSP, a bunch of watches, and a laptop backpack.

I’m taking the day off work to call repairmen, etc.

What fun!

I find that I’m much more likely to ride public transit to work when I have something to read. And that’s even though it’s so loud that I can’t read sometimes. Today it was too loud because there were lots of kids going downtown to see the US Women’s Soccer Team play an exhibition match. I moved away, but they were all through the light rail yelling at each other. I’m not sure what the point was, but it would be like, “Ashley! Ashley! Ashley! (then another joining in) Ashley! Ashley! Ashley! Come sit over here!” Then someone in another part of the group would start with another name. Then there were some adults right next to me complaining about their McJob, which sounded quite bad, but what do I expect taking public transit? Certainly not lawyers and doctors.

So my buddy just called and had to tell me he was on a date. He doesn’t date much either, and the woman he was out with knew the NBA ref that crashed into the back of his car a few years back. I’ve told that story before, so I won’t repeat it. But there it is, three degrees of separation from the NBA ref this time. Last time I was a passenger in the car during the crash. I have two degrees of separation to Sam Elliott, who my sister saw shopping in Target. Apparently he grew up in these parts. The Target in question is one with semi-hot young girls working there. Well, they’re “Gresham” hot, if you know what I mean.

Dave the Trainer was going on and on about the chiropractor who was teaching some exercise class this weekend and I had to tell him just how little I thought of a group of people that eschewed the scientific method. Basically, I think they’re a bunch of loons who make things up. I thought about it for a while, wondering why I was so against them and I realized a couple of things. I don’t like people who believe in a lie, and this includes certain core beliefs that many people share that I do not.

I also don’t trust my medical care to people who did so much worse in school than I did. I was a big geek and I worked pretty hard for my grades. Well, at least I worked for my grades. The problem is, some of the naturopaths, homeopaths, chiropractors, etc, are those guys who were stoned through my chemistry classes. I’m sure there are those in those fields who did well in school, but I’ve found them to be the exception. Their disdain for Western medicine also translated to a disdain for Western learning. It’s a matter of trust, I suppose, and I really don’t trust someone to look at my bloodwork if they didn’t do well in Biochem.

Ah, well, I can chalk this up to another one of my issues.

I was told last week by someone that they would call their sister and tell her before they wrote about her in a public forum. I’m guessing they’re either very close to their sibling and call them all time, or they don’t have much of a sense of humor. In any case, here’s some more secrets about her. Well, I’m even exaggerating more than I usually do, because it’s no secret that she has a sweet tooth. And my brother-in-law only likes things made of chocolate. So that means she eats EVERYTHING HERSELF. And she’s tiny. Well, she runs a lot (and I mean a lot) so she burns it all off, but does she share those desserts with her brother across town? (7.9 miles by google maps, about 16 minutes) Not at all.

I think I’ve been losing some weight. It’s pretty simple: I started taking public transportation and walking 20-25 minutes, each way, to the light rail station. I think I’ve decided to drive more often, even though it’s working well for me, because I can do the whole commute in ~35 minutes and I can spend more time at work that way. The more time I spend at work, the less time I have to spend working at home, even though it’s easier working at home than in the lab at work. It’s so comfortable to work on the computer in your underwear, and they kind of frown on that at Megacorp.

I went to another session of my “Structural Integration” again. Man, did it hurt. But the pain is temporary. For example, I was getting work done on the bottom of my foot. If I stepped on a rock that hurt that much, I’d be in pain for days. When Fred stops, the pain stops. So that means he’s doing something that hurts that doesn’t really damage anything. There are places that are sore for a couple of days, but if anything else made me hurt that much initially, I would be in great pain for days. I wonder if I explained that properly? Today was some work on the abdominal muscles and it’s really hard to breathe through the pain there. Especially since it kind of pulls on the diaphragm.

In any case, that’s the fun I had today. It was a beautiful day and I did make it outside to put some leaf screens into the gutters, but I even woke up late today. I blame the ‘flu shot I got yesterday. It’s probably really just because it’s sleeping weather.

I’m not sure why there are so many unpleasant people in the world. I suppose there just are, and you have to put up with it. I just got another comment on my blog from one of the unpleasant people, and I decided just to delete it and quit thinking about it. Heck, it’s my blog. I didn’t go to his house and start calling him an asshole in his living room. He came here and started telling me about my life. And, by looking at the comments and the email I got, nobody wanted to hear what he had to say. It’s kind of a weird coincidence that he showed up about the same time with all the other random non-knitting people.

I’m not the only one with weird problems. A neighbor had a flyer glued to her front steps about a missing dog with the note, “I know you can give me more info!” When she called the number on the flyer and asked what they meant, she was told, “You know what I mean!” and the person hung up. She was kind of disturbed by this and called me to see if I had seen any bulldogs lately. For some reason, I can only remember pugs, a few beagles, some terriers, and a whole lot of Golden Retrievers.

My next door neighbors had problems with the light in the laundry room, and they had to use the hall light. But the hall light would wake their very young kids, so they had to do laundry in the dark. Eventually they were so annoyed that they were calling electricians on a Saturday morning, knowing that if they found one to come out on the weekend they’d have to pay through the nose. Fortunately, they didn’t find one, because it was easy to fix.

It’s going to be harder to fix my chimney cap. I took the pieces to the hardware store and they think it’s just epoxied together with JB Weld rather than being a specially made chimney-cap-doohickey. I don’t know the knitting/sewing equivalent of this (knowing the usual audience of this blog), but I do remember seeing someone use a hot-melt-glue-gun to put jewels on a wedding dress. I remember thinking, “Is that really the way they do that sort of thing?”

Normal life away from computers continues, and it’s a life.

I am amazed by the number of morons I’m attracting lately. I suppose the number is only really two or three since “Jason” and “Sam” appear to be the same person and Greg is the other one. Ah, whatever. I’d think they’d be better served surfing the intarweb looking for pictures of Britney Spears’ cooter, but I’m not their boss. Or they may be here hoping I’ll have naked pictures of myself online. Not happening (and I’m sure most of you are happy about that.)

My Mac laptop is still in the shop and I’m not real sure why Greg is so ignorant about getting computers serviced. In most of the world, people only have Dells and Apples. A couple of people have Sonys but they’re aberrations.

• If you need to get a Dell fixed, you call India and are put on hold until they can string a phone wire from the border to the call center to service your call and they tell you to reboot a bunch of times until they’re convinced you’re serious about getting your computer fixed. Then they might start to help.
• If you have an HP/Compaq, you just junk it and buy a new one at Staples or OfficeMax.
• If you have an IBM/Lenovo, you cry salty tears or just get your company to fix it for you because real people don’t own IBM/Lenovo computers, just corporations.
• If you need to get a Mac fixed and you’re lucky enough to live in a town with an Apple Store, you go online to make an appointment and then you show up, in person, to talk to a tech support person who isn’t really a genius but is called an “Apple Genius” who will at least look at your computer and see the problem first-hand. The face-to-face interaction is key. If they find something wrong they just take the computer in for repair right there. They can even ship the thing back to you if you want. Elapsed time is 2 minutes to fish around the web site for the appointment link, travel time to the store (15 minutes for me), wait time at the store (usually 5-20 minutes for me), time to talk to the genius (10-15 minutes), and travel time back (10 minutes for me because I don’t have to look for parking when I get home). Then I wait.

So, basically, it’s a lot easier for me to get my computer fixed, and I don’t pay extra for support. I know I’ve paid a huge premium up front, but I like the fact that I don’t feel like throwing the thing through the window like I do with things running Microsoft OSes. I even got my mom one. Or two, if you count the replacement MacBook Pro I got her this year.

Today I found out that one of my co-workers is forwarding my blog posts to management. While it was pointed out to me that things are looking much better than I was remembering last night, the fact that I have such co-workers is kind of disheartening. It’s not a surprise, just disheartening.

I’m not sure why anyone would care about what I say, and I was surprised that anyone even reads this drivel. (It’s practice for me, to keep up my writing chops.) But it has now been pointed out to me by friends that in this day and age I’m not allowed to have any public opinions, at least not about work. That’s even though I’m quite simple in my opinions. I don’t try to mislead anyone and it’s pretty obvious how I’m feeling whether I write it down or not. It’s just in this case, people who are assuming I’m fat, dumb, and happy realize that I’m only two of the three.

It should also be obvious that I exaggerate things. I don’t usually name names, and even when I do people can be caricatures of the way they really are. I mean, how much fun would it be if I listed every little mundane detail about a person? It’s much better to point out interesting characteristics and anomalies. I just hope that anyone in a position of power above me possesses a sense of humor. In any case, I will now try to quit talking about work.

I usually don’t comment on comments left on my blog, but I should point out that the theme of my blog is not wowees me. It’s WOE IS ME. I am aware that I am a bit of a sad sack and it does not need to be pointed out to me by strangers. However, I find that I must correct malapropisms. I hope this has helped to increase the literacy on the web.

The high point of my day, at work, was getting yelled at by an “architect” who is basically an engineer who is at the same level as my manager. He gets to decide what we do next year, IF we do something next year. Well, I should say, if I do anything next year because I’m not sure anyone else got yelled at today.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS?

Well, in all honesty, I’ve been doing what I’ve been asked to do, when I haven’t been so depressed about the crap I’m being forced to do. The “architect” wanted me to do certain things and my manager (the guy who writes my performance review) wanted me do do other things. Things that didn’t make sense, but my manager is my manager and really should be the one telling me what I need to do from day-to-day.

Not only that, but I was having a hard time with the transition from, “Linux development,” to, “Windows torture.” I mean even compiling programs downloaded off the intarweb required lots of right-clicking on random things to set this and that. And running the compiled programs required copying libraries around. Holy crap, what a pain in the ass. I never got to the point of writing my own programs because of that and other things I was assigned to do, and I got yelled at. I even got an email from “the architect” telling me that I was no longer useful to him. Basically, it was an email that said, YOU FAIL.

Earlier in the day I was reading the final email from the woman I went out with earlier this year. Two whole dates. She told me,

You’re cute and you’re funny, but you seem really young — nothing wrong with that, but I feel kind of old at this point, and I don’t want to date anyone who feels much younger than me.

She’s telling me I’m immature, right? I told her early on that the best rejections were short and sweet. I don’t need people telling me what’s wrong with me. It’s not like I’m going to change.

I’m feeling really good about myself right now. How about you?

I got up this morning unable to walk straight. I figured it was something odd with my inner ear and sinuses, so I went back to sleep. I figured I could go in late, since I had an 8PM conference call. But I’d forgotten a dinner with neighbors, and I’d forgotten how little I want to go to work. I ended up working from home, setting up my computer to do some of the programming I do at work.

The dinner was at Pok Pok, which was named the best restaurant in Portland by some hipster doofus which just means it’s insanely crowded and pretty good. Not excellent or exquisite. Just pretty good. I’m not in the mood to be bullied by people in the service industry who can get away with it because their restaurant is popular. Or having my ears ring because I’m in a tiny room with a bunch of women at the next table screeching at each other because, well, I don’t know why they were shouting at each other but it was loud. Maybe I’m just not as enamored of Southeast Asian cuisine. I certainly don’t like cilantro. But nothing was bad, so I wouldn’t not suggest it to anyone.