Getting Over It

I am finally getting over my cold. We broke up a few days ago. She tried to hook me up with her sister Bronchitis, but I said “NO! I’m not interested. Let’s just pretend to be friends and never call each other ever again.” I’m also getting over my angry cough; for two nights it’s been getting me up at 3am in a fit of dream-coughing that gets so bad I wake up and have to do something about it. Disrupts my sleep. But I take some robo, double up my pillows to elevate my head, and make another pass at sleep. Maybe tonight will prove successful.

Work is hectic. My department is in the middle of a move to the new campus, so my coworkers and I have been pulling crap out of the corners, piling papers, sorting them into stacks, and then throwing away all the stacks. Every wire, cable, heat sink, component, processor, screw, server, everything has to be sorted, returned to its place and packed up by 5pm next wednesday. So far, it’s all a clusterfuck: trying to motivate and organize a department of ~75 people to get their stuff straight, and trying to get the movers to understand what we need moved, and trying to have all parties communicate what actually has to happen (versus what people think needs to happen) is a herculean effort. AND my coworker and I have to keep producing numbers. So, when all our equipment is over in the new campus across town, we’ll be with our test servers and offline test equipment in the old campus trying to do our work for two days, and then we’ll pack it all up and carry it all across town.

Predicting a huge pain in the ass.

While writing this, I remembered that I needed to update my timesheet, so I tabbed over to my Google Notes page to note the time I left today. What the hell…when I clicked on the note that contained all my clock-in/clock-out times for this week, the note disappeared. Deleted. So I clicked “Undo”, and the note came back, then I clicked on the note again to select it for editing…it deleted again. So I clicked “Undo”. It didn’t come back. It wasn’t in the deleted bin. It just…vanished. What the hell. All my timepoints lost, and I hadn’t had the chance to enter it all into my real timesheet app. So, I tried to remember and re-entered everything.

Maybe I should not be so trusting. Maybe if I say “Google sucks!” they’ll find this entry in their results for the search “Google sucks” (companies have departments that do this) and they’ll contact me to see what they can do to help make it right. Maybe I should file a bug report. Maybe I should just get over it.

I hate computers.

Year-end Egress Into Infirmity

So yeah, I’m sick. Thanks.

My year, 2007, was punctuated by eleven days off; holiday work closure encompassing seven working days and two weekends. I planned to use this time for loafing, for projects, for doing what the hell pops into my mind; then my mother called to tell me she was coming down for a visit, to which I agreed. It was nice having family come visit me for a holiday for once; enough of going to visit them every year. I love that woman to death – I mean, c’mon, she’s my mom. But I don’t know how to tell her to not stay so long. Seven days. I asked around trying to divine what kind of protocol there is for telling family that they are welcome but only for a certain time. The answer comes back, resoundingly, that nobody knows how to do it. There is no protocol.

She says she’s a homebody; she’ll be fine just sitting and watching TV and that I can go out and do whatever. I can come and go as I please because it’s my house. I say bullshit to that. If I were to have done just that, I would’ve heard no end of it. “I come to visit, and you hang out elsewhere.” It won’t work. When I have a guest, my sole duty is to entertain the guest. I’m always on set. Little down time. People don’t understand that about me. If you’re in my house, I am your host. What I have going on has to be suspended. Maybe that’s an immature way to look at it. Maybe I’m taking the role of servitude. I don’t know. But that’s how it happens.

I learned an apt phrase a decade ago. “The hardest thing for a man to do is to disguise his feelings as he puts a load of relatives on the train for home.”

So she left friday morning, travelled safely, and got back home. I rested. That evening, I sat at Epoch and had coffee. Tried to get some work done; tried to pick back up where I had left off a week prior, and had no luck. I couldn’t think clearly, got a little angsty. I left there around 10 and started driving because I clearly didn’t want to be in the four walls of my own apartment. I drove around town, ended up on Highway 290W, and drove out to Oak Hill. I kept driving.

Seventy minutes later I was in Fredericksburg, Texas. I had no suitcase, no toiletries, no change of clothes, but I rented a room and spent the night. It was really nice to get away. To punctuate the stressful week with my own diversion. Complete seat-of-the-pants. I didn’t care. That’s the kind of shit I wanted to do the entire break; completely live without schedule, without demands, and finally I was able to do it, but damn did I do it big.

I got up that morning and did the tourist thing. The downtown area was kinda neat, but in a 1960’s crafts fair kind of way. Tons of middle-class white people dropping money everywhere. I had a nice wurst sandwich, got a taste of the local German culture, walked around and took pictures. Sort of went around as a floating eye and soaked it in. I left after it all got too white and made it back to Austin at 3pm.

Spent the remaining days of 2007 just doing what felt right. Completely relaxed, turned off to necessity. Tried to regain myself and my own initiative. Took a right turn on my main website project and decided to backtrack and retool, but it’s still not so successful.

I should learn by now that I can’t get any work done at Epoch. It’s fucking impossible. I can sit down, open the laptop, and hunker down for work. And then someone will stop by the table, say hi. Someone will walk by and decide to chat, or join me. And out the door goes my attention. Programming is a tough task; takes focus. And there is no focus when someone visits; it’s broken and not so easily retrieved.

So last night, I got called out to a New Year’s Eve party at a friend’s place. I obliged. Took the remains of my rum bottle, a bottle of cola, and headed out the door. Had a great time at the party. It was quiet, mild. We had a ton of fireworks but because of the red flag warning we chose to stick to firecrackers and roman candles. Well, the roman candles were a bad, very bad idea. It took two stray flaming balls to prove to us what a tinderbox the tall grass next to the road actually was. No sooner did the balls land in the grass and start going out, the grass burst into flames. We were sober enough, luckily, to stomp it out and decide to not do roman candles again.

I didn’t get drunk; didn’t even get buzzed, but I got relaxed. That’s what counts, really. About 4 shots of rum, a lot of water, and a glass of champaign and I was still sober. Went to bed around 3. An alright night indeed.

But this morning; fucking hell. Now I’m reminded why I shouldn’t drink. The alcohol was just enough to kill off all the germs that were keeping the bad germs at bay. When I woke up, my throat was on fire. I’m all scratchy, phlegmatic, and getting stopped up in the head. Fucking hell. An ok end to the year leads me into the lair of the illness dragon to start the new year off in the worst of ways. And now I have to go back to work tomorrow morning. Damn.

Happy effing new year, dammit.

Taking, Making, Giving: a Shit

So it’s 10 o’clock. I got off of work a mere 4 hours ago. I ate, went to one coffeeshop, found no seating there, went to another coffeeshop, again found no seating, bought a cup to go, and went home. Three hours later, I have fuckall to show for it. WTF. What’d I do tonight? I read some myspace (for the first time in 2 weeks), I played two rounds of Unreal Tournament, and that’s it. WTF.

I’m in a crisis, folks. I don’t know what to do with myself. Tonight’s restlessness is but a symptom of a growing problem I’m facing with the concept that, at age 35, I’m wasting my life on useless, wandering, meandering pursuits that will neither benefit me nor mankind in the least. I’m wasting my time. Is that what life’s all about, or is there more? I mean, I leave work, find a fast food place to eat, and then either go home and mope (and do nothing productive) or I go to a coffeeshop and sit there, laptop open, mouth agape, mind blank, and do nothing productive. It’s like Where do I begin? I have so much stuff that I want to do. So much I want to say, to share, to experience and I do nothing about it. Just hold it in. I’m currently, physically, dealing with a case of diarrhea, but I feel that it’s my life that needs to take a shit.

I’m giving in to that part of my instinct that’s a scared little animal. I’m afraid to express. Fuck sakes, it takes me 5 minutes to gather my volition to write an email to my manager at work. It takes half an hour to decide on calling someone. Shit, it’s been years since I asked anyone out (it failed, naturally). So what the hell? If I were a bird whose species relied on crowding onto a rocky cliff face to build a nest, I would have no offspring because I don’t want to play the game. I don’t want to fight for my piece of dirt. I enjoy crowds when I can sail through them anonymously, but when something’s at stake — my life, my property, my status — I want nothing of it. I’d rather starve and let those animals fight like dogs over their precious piece of meat. In a large enough population, this behavior would be more apparent. Maybe that loner nature is necessary to cause me to seek resources elsewhere. I don’t know; there are 12 answers, and they’re all correct. I’m such a fool.

Too Tired for Idealism

Listening to Sophie & Ives’ song “Awaken”. Fucking phenomenal. Product of a transoceanic love affair between two artists, an american man and a New Zealand woman. An impossible love affair made possible by the internet. The hunger of the lyrics, and embrace of the music. Fuck. This is why I love the net; this kind of stuff exists. This is how I pictured the net in the idealism of my mid-20’s, a scant decade ago.

I dug out my boxes of floppies. Decided that since I have a lot of disk space I should probably backup those dusty pieces of yesteryear onto something a little more modern. Floppies and cdroms are poor mediums for long-term archival. Took two evenings, but I got through everything. Sorted and categorized everything into driver disks, boot disks, and important data. Backed up what I felt important. Found three floppies that contained all of the data I backed up from my three VAX accounts on my last week in school, December ’95. Every worthwhile email, every source code file, every text file, every configuration file. It’s all there.

Found a philosophical op-ed piece I wrote in September ’95 in the VAX lab. Forgot that I wrote that beast. Some generic 20-something blag about “This is our/your life, this is our/your world. Take it, use it, live it!” I obviously had some high hopes about the future although I was in the midst of failing miserably in my own schooling. Had no money for books; was dropping out of classes one by one; was working a night job and distancing myself from the very reason why I was in school, and for what? Some idealistic zeal that I just couldn’t shake even after leaving the religious environment which spawned it.

Yet there I was; writing about how we may come from chaos and shackles but through hope, through grasping onto the Now, through embracing new things (like the Internet), we may liberate ourselves and live the grand life we have all imagined. It’s apparent to me, in hindsight, that I had some obviously unresolved existential issues (still do). But the heart was still there: the desire to connect with others, to reach out, trade strength with people “out there” to build for ourselves a better world. Ten years later, a slim glint of that hope still exists in me, but to be perfectly honest, I’m too tired for idealism.

I’ve spun other yarns over the years about the salvation achieved by friends and strangers reaching out and offering kind words, helpful life advice, providing solace to those desolate and of ill psyche. Yarns about how we’re all on this great worldwide network and that it’s our Tomorrow. But the past six years have tought me, if anything, that such a dream cannot, and never will, be. We have forum users calling each other fags. Image boards are waging war on each other. A genre of websites has spawned that use other site’s content in order to serve their own share of the advertising market. It’s all money and marketshare now. Genuity is out with yesterday’s newspaper, seen as a weakness and as source material for someone else’s website.

I thought anonymity would save us; but it has doomed us to partisan bickering, flames, and trolls. It’s discouraging; gives me reason to not post anything on my blog.

Too Much Life

Sometimes I just want to click off. Existential angst of late. I’ve had the desire to formulate some kind of journal entry, but as things are going, it takes too much work and energy to do so. I’ve had so much Life coming at me at once, there’s not enough energy or will to put the words together. Hence my usual silence. Seriously. Too much of Life.

Big fires to put out, little fires to put out. So scattered, all over the place, bunched up in little notes and to-do lists. So concerned with forgetting to do something that I write it down, make a note, and then I fail to remember. Sometimes I fail to actually attempt to do what’s on the list.

To-Do lists are the tool of the devil. Make a note of that.

I’m looking for another car. It’s that season again, and now that I commute 25+ miles a day my Mirage is failing sadly. The increased smoke is drawing attention, and there’s an aweful lot of cops on the road. Was looking at a Honda Civic: 2002, 130k miles, EX trim package with power everything and a sunroof, stickshift, 4-door. Everything I wanted in a car for $7,000. I didn’t move soon enough; the dealer jacked the price up another thousand. Fuck that. My search passively continues.

I am currently digesting the first season of Battlestar Gallactica (the remake). I wish I had been old enough to follow the plot of the original, but I was in 2nd grade; all I cared about was the kid and his creepy robot monkeydog. I will tell you this much about the new show: I am hooked. Damn you all to hell, I am hooked. This is the most I’ve ever seen Edward James Olmos speak, and he’s perfect for the part.

You should know what kinds of assholes I share my apartment complex with. Monday night, the jackasses downstairs decided to crank their music loud enough that my floor was vibrating. So, I did what any angry neighbor would do: I kicked the floor. Expectedly, they turned it down…and then proceeded to agressively slam their ceiling with whatever they had. I fully expected them to start fucking with me; I don’t care so much about breaking and entering now that Texas has the Castle Law, I’m worried about them doing something stupid to my car, to the plants in front of my apartment. People can be that trivial.

I hate apartments. Keep thinking about moving out.

Found out there’s a hiring freeze at my job which is expected to last a while. Even the permanent employees are required to burn off some of their vacation time over the holidays; mandatory closure as a cost-cutting measure. Last time I saw that was 2001, during the dotcom crash; I was contracting at Motorola and after the layoffs of unimportant staff, they had each department take one week off. Shortly afterwards, Motorola sold its Austin campuses to its spinoff company Freescale. I don’t see much logic in mandatory closure; I guess it saves energy and infrastructure costs and requires employees (most of them salary, mind you) to spend their vacation hours instead of acrue them. But you lose so much time during the ramp down and ramp up periods after the closure. How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot, 2.0.

Ruby On Rails made me her bitch tonight. She spanked my ass hard with an important lesson. I’ve had this mind-crushing problem with trying to build a test harness for one of my model classes. I set the record attribute, try to save, and my missing-attribute validation kicks in. I know I fucking set that attribute, so why’s it not passing validation? Here’s the lesson: ActiveRecord uses automatically-created accessor methods to set/get the values of a database record. What was I doing? I was trying to use an ActiveRecord instance as a hash with special powers. That’s wrong, wrong, wrong. When I go “person[:password] = ‘secretpass'”, I’m setting something in a hash somewhere that AR is not paying attention to. I’m really supposed to go: “person.password = ‘secretpass'”. What a dumbass. So two weeks of frustrated freetime were spent debugging an issue that was all my own fault.

– I should call my mother some time. It’s been a while.
– I need to take a shower before bed.
– I should go into work early tomorrow.
– I need to start using my bicycle more; I paid so much for it, and I’m so out of shape.
– I need to pick up some antacids.
– I have a dentist appointment next month.
– I now have 1.5Gigs of ram in my laptop. I can play games again, but I need to make space.
– I have so much more to do with my Rails project, it’s unreal.
– I need new shoes
– I should get a haircut some time soon
– I’ve got to put all this on my to-do list