So I got my yearly review last Friday and there were good parts and bad parts. I got the lowest raise of anyone in my group, but the largest raise of most of my friends. I was told that my old group didn’t like me, but they were doing me a favor. Whatever. I still hate my job, but I make a little more money. I think my paychecks will be in the tens of dollars bigger.

So yesterday I heard my neighbor yelling at his kids. I couldn’t tell what he was saying and I know he’s not the kind of guy to be yelling at a 2-year-old girl. Certainly not for a couple of minutes. I finally figured it out when I heard him yelling, “RED LIGHT!” “GREEN LIGHT!” I guess he was just trying to explain the rules of the game. Heh.

I was so depressed about being stuck in my job that I just kind of sat in the cafeteria for hours. It was also the nicest day this year and I wasn’t the only one slacking. I had friends leave several times to play golf and the parking lot was much more empty this morning than usual.

Fortunately, I don’t let the place bother me too much after I leave. I really ought to do something to improve my job skills but I’m too busy trying to figure out how to read the ID badge I got at a conference. I think it’s going to give me a random 16-digit number and that’s not exciting at all to most people, but I’m still trying to do it. Beats worrying about other things and I can’t spend all my time at the gym.

Sometimes I think it’s just me that hates the changes in my group at work but today three people left to join other groups within Megacorp. There’s a huge attrition rate in the group. The worst part is the guy who couldn’t do the freshman programming is leaving for a FreeBSD OS job. I’m the BSD guy, not him. Why didn’t I see this job? Why have I interviewed for jobs and gotten nowhere? I just suck.

In other news, I saw how non-mainstream I am when I was at the gym staring at all the, “No classes this Sunday,” signs, wondering why classes were cancelled. Then I realized, duh, it’s Easter Sunday. Maybe I ought to buy a calendar.

I’m sure most people want to exercise and go, but they have to listen to me go on and on. In fact, one of the women called me a f**ktard. Well, actually, she was just guessing what my sister calls me, but you get the idea. She also suggested that I write a book called, “Get a Backbone, Geek!”

I’m kind of wondering what sort of job I should have where I can yell at people once in a while. My buddy Craig, who works at a pub, said he told his boss to f**k off at least once a day. Of course, his boss quit and went on to become a brewer. Maybe that’s the sort of environment I need to be in. I could do without all the cigarette smoke, though.

I suppose having a stomach ache in the middle of the night didn’t help. I also hate my job (and my management chains’ indecision) so much that my fuse is getting a little too short. A guy I have no respect for said something fairly innocuous, and I snapped. It went something like:

Are you sure you know what you’re doing?

F*** you.

I need to be a lot more civil, but how can you be someone you’re not? My sister is no help. She just yells at me and tells me to grow up. I think I just need to leave my awful job. I wonder if there’s a job where I don’t have to deal with stupid people and get health benefits. I know that’s very unlikely, but without hope I’d just give up and live in a box for the rest of my two or three years (where I’d be without the health insurance).

My friend Fred just bought 22 acres and is going to build a house out in the weeds. It’s only a few miles from my buddy Greg’s but I consider him to be out in the weeds as well. We thought no one would mess with Fred’s construction project, but someone already started screwing with his well. So we went up and helped him put up some posts for a fence today.

I’m not sure how that took so much time, because the power auger made things go a lot quicker than the usual manual posthole digger, but it took some time. This time of the year I’m always wondering why I’m so tired, and I think it’s all the plants and their pollen. It’s also the perfect nap weather. I suppose it’s always the perfect weather for naps.

I took a picture of the prices at the San Diego zoo. I’m not sure why I thought it was over sixty dollars to get in, but it was pretty expensive. Anyway, I started wandering around the park and stumbled across a really nice arboretum. It included desert plants

and a rose garden.

I also have a picture of the hotel

and the harbor across the road.

The winds blew straight across the bay and onto the screen glass door of my room. I’m guessing San Diego doesn’t have this kind of weather usually because no one would want to stay in a room like that.

I added some pictures to this weeks postings, if you’re interested in seeing pictures of FOOD.

I’m back home, skipping the Microsoft block party where they’re renting a whole block of restaurants in downtown San Diego. I called today a travel day and got myself sunburned by walking from the zoo to the hotel and then making an excursion to In-N-Out burger. I didn’t notice that I was getting sunburned because I was SNOW BLIND. It’s too damn hot in San Diego (it was in the 60’s!) and it’s too damn bright.

The In-N-Out turned out to be next door to Gold’s Gym so I went in to take a look. They have SEVENTY FIVE cardio machines! Man, those Californians are nuts. Oh, and I had to walk across 12 lanes of traffic several times to get to In-N-Out. I think I’m the only person who makes more than minimum wage who was walking around down there. And the only thing downtown is courthouse after courthouse. It’s Crazy Town.

In case anyone wonders why I spend so much time at the gym and don’t seem to lose any weight, here’s a picture of my weakness, a double-double animal style with fries extra done.

The conference was OK but there’s only so many three-hour lectures a guy can take. I don’t think the lectures were that long when I was in college. I’m going to take tomorrow to wander aimlessly through San Diego.

Thank goodness the lady next door stopped talking on her cell phone. I got back to my hotel around 6 and she was talking on her cell phone on the adjacent balcony. I went down to exercise in the hotel gym and when I got back she was still there talking. I went downstairs to eat dinner and when I got back she was still talking. That’s at least five hours worth.

I was going to go to Gold’s gym but I cheaped out and hit the hotel gym. Hotel gyms are kind of pathetic, but I figured it would have been at least $30 in cab fare and when I called they told me that they didn’t lend out locks like the Gold’s in Portland. I’d have to buy a $8 lock when I have a bunch at home already. Plus the towel charge. It all worked out because I was able to watch Bones while I was on the elliptical trainer.

Sounds like I’m going to miss a huge Microsoft party tomorrow, but I’d rather go home. I can hang out with geek any time (and I do.)

After a night where the wind in San Diego was blowing so hard that the sliding glass door in my hotel room was howling, I made it to the Microsoft indoctrination conference where they were passing out extra-strength Kool-aid. I’m thinking of quitting my job and trying to get a job as an Apple genius (Apple retail, for those who don’t know.) Plus, every lecture there was a guy with an incredibly large melon on his shoulders sitting right in front of me and a couple of Euros behind me yapping throughout the presentation.

So, in the evening, I tried to eat myself to death. I went to Cafe Zucchero in San Diego’s Little Italy (a lot closer than the convention center) and had a veal shank that was saltier than I like with some wine that was more astringent than I like. Not perfect, but still delicious so I ate until I was unable to eat any more.

The waiter tempted me with a dessert tray and I told him, “If you had a cannoli on there, even though you don’t, I’d have one.” He had cannolis, just not on the tray. I couldn’t sensibly eat another bite but I forced down a delicious cannoli (and some delicious decaf cappuccino.) That was the best part of the meal.

 

An odd thing I’ve noticed walking around San Diego is that there are older women here (which probably makes them my age) and very young women here (college students who look like high school students) but nothing in between. Odd.

Anyway, the best part of the conference was finding out that my ID badge had an RFID tag in it. I hunted down the guy from the company providing the tags and he told me that they’re excited at 13.6MHz and now I have something to experiment with when I get home.

The sliding glass door is still howling from the wind and the front desk told me that every room has the same problem so I can’t switch to a quieter room. Good thing they provide ear plugs.

I made it to San Diego a little late and this was my first ride on Southwest Airlines. And what a ride. I was worried about the lack of assigned seating, but that was no big deal. Crowded flights are crowded flights. They passed out peanuts and drinks, which was nice. No audio programming, though, and I always liked plugging my headphones into SOMETHING so I could avoid listening to all the cabin noise (and by cabin noise I mean I always get seated next to the kids and you can imagine what that’s like.)

The biggest difference was that they flew the plane like a plane. Other airlines try to maximize comfort by doing things like yawing the plane instead of actually banking and turning. Or they fly AROUND rough patches instead of THROUGH them. We had a bit of a roller coaster on both legs of the flight, from Portland to Reno and from Reno to San Diego.

When I finally got here I had to wait 50 minutes for the hotel shuttle. That meant I was late to watch 24 and I had to get room service and my second hamburger of the day because it was too late to go out for dinner. Ah, well, the adventure continues.

Yesterday I was out late because of a friend’s birthday party. Since I’m old a lot of people were calling it quits at 11PM, but somehow I got roped into a game of M.U.L.E. and I got home around 1AM. Oh, and the friend brews incredible beer so I had to have “some” and of course that means today is just nap day for me.

I did finally get over to fix a guy’s FAX line. A friend from the gym works at an apartment building that is for low-income seniors and one of her residents was having trouble with the FAX machine. He had his walls painted and somehow the phone line to his FAX machine no longer worked. I helped him get that back working (and I helped a guy replace a belt on a vacuum cleaner). So I guess I did SOMETHING today.

It’s not like I do all that much on a Sunday. My friends know this. Megan called and I took the abuse while she set up her new DSL and wireless at her apartment in San Francisco. You can probably guess this took most of an hour on the phone but the only thing I was going to do was take another nap. And I did that as well.