The Day I Wish I Had
8 am: Woke up to the smell of gourmet coffee brewing, feeling invigorated and totally refreshed without the alarm clock's banshee wail. Noticed a full pack of cigarettes that had fallen beneath the bed as I reached for my fluffy bunny slippers. A good morning kiss from whatshisname before I booted him out with a phone number and empty promise and got ready for class.
8:30 am: Soaking in the jacuzzi whatshisname left behind, I looked over my reading assignments for the day's classes and realized I could grok every word of the books! 10:00 am: Arrived on campus to discover an early morning invasion of trained attack weasels had forced officials to cancel classes while pieces of the faculty were located and bagged. Went for a cappucino.
4:00 pm: Gay agenda meeting...plotted the takeover and corruption of America over iced tea and other nibblies.
4:05 pm: Decided it wasn't worth the effort. Went home and took a nap.
8:30 pm: Awoke from a strange dream in which I penned the Great American Novel and noticed the reams of paper filling my floor and the ballpoint pen gripped firmly in my paw.
8:31 pm: Vowed aloud that my powers should be used for good, not evil.
8:45 pm: Finished laughing.
After this horribly self-referential beginning, let me tell you that being a boss is bastard's work. Yes, I can see you all nod out there ... indeed it is. You must decide about other people's income ! And one is constantly torn between the Demon of Efficiency and the Demon of Tolerance
Demon of Efficiency: if you fired Mr. Foo and Mr. Bar you could hire one really good progo and your life would be easier. Demon of Tolerance: WHAT ? You had actually promised a raise to Mr. Foo ! DoE: Yes, but in the last two weeks (probably because of the raise idea) he has been slacking like a pro ! He is not worth the chair he rests his sweaty butt on ! DoT: But, but (lip starts trembling) ... you too slack ! DoE: But you are the boss ! You can slack !
... and it goes on and on. Notice the conspicuous absence of any Angel in the dialog. I used to have an Angel of Reason but the various Demons outnumbered and defenestrated him (or her, one is never really sure with angels). Woe is me, saith baffo. This being out of the way, I must say that a healthy amount of schyzophrenia allows me not to be crushed by my duties and by the possibilities of countless goatfucks: I just tune them out.
Bright, cheery Miss Nice was being crushed by the insanity of the place where we both work. The shifting deadlines, confused objectives and ridiculous requirements, combined with a healthy dose of all-around ignorance, were getting to her: being a smart young woman, she went on vacation. I am happy for her, but I miss the company. Project Goosefood, now that we are being helped by outside consultants has accelerated its pace ... toward the granite wall that awaits it. Someone had the brilliant idea to do construction and demolition work in the room where my beloved big, fragile, Sun servers are hosted. The fans promptly sucked in a bucketload of red brick dust, and distributed it inside the machines. I thank Eris for dust-sealed hard disks. The person guilty for such an unspeakable act of stupidity said that they had covered the machines with a tarp, and that anyway it was unavoidable because those fans sure are powerful. He didn't even say he was sorry. He is a fuckwit. As soon as I can, I will pull the machines out.
In the other side of my job, the Long Haul Division, things are not bad. The new printer, a fine example of when Hewlett Packard gets it right, makes me happy every time I see it. It even has a little IR port, and I can print directly from my Palm Pilot. My immediate mega boss is on holiday. I am keeping her posted with email, but if I were her, I would ignore it, at least for the first week.
I have re-read "Tristes Tropiques" by Claude Levy-Strauss: lovely.
Homesickness is slowly lifting, because I know that in two weeks' time I'll be in Italy for a fortnight. Joy. I miss my family.
12 September 2000, 10:00AM-10:00AM ADST
Found an annoying problem with timezones, above header is here to correct it.
Today I read a Sherlock Holmes story entitled A Case of Identity, tried playing some Oddworld and getting killed. Which is what some people seem to want to happen to my log.
Margaret has just arrived and has suggested walk to Bondi. I have agreed. It might take my mind off being docked an experience point by that annoying Level 2 or Higher person.
There, that's much better, but I still only have 3 XP.
Before going to dinner, we went over and had a look at the Sydney Harbour National Park and a really spectacular view. I can see why they think it is the best harbour in the world. The harbour bridge had its Olympic Rings on it and everyone was very impressed at the sunset.
After that, we had dinner. I had a Margareta Pizza and a Lemonade, followed by ice cream at the New Zealand Ice Cream place at Bondi. (don't you love hard links?)
Wow. Two votes for my log!
Woke up at 7:00AM. I normally have to wake up this early to get ready to go to school on time anyway I rationalise as I flip the laptop open and dial up.
Woo hoo!!! 5 votes! 5, 5, 5, 5, Stain' Alive.
Ahh... who knows what the , future holds?
Today is the day of the Opening Ceremony Rehersal of the Sydney Olympic Games. My sister is participating in it, so I get a free ticket. I'll keep all you noders informed in what happens in the momentous occasion.
7 Votes! Yeah!
College Station, Texas, a wonderful town, and temporary home of one of my very closest friends Allison Deen. Allison had a party this weekend and of course I was invited. Arriving at 3:30 I was to say the least a little early, since the party didn't start until 7:00. Well the whole story revolves around this little propane grill that I was elected to bring back to the party from Allison's roomates friend, or something. We picked up the grill and headed back to the house of the party. Upon arriving Allison decided she would rather use charcoal instead of propane. No big deal, that is a viable option with most grills. Tinfoil was laid down to collect the ashes, and the fire was set. It was not long until we discovered that the coals were not burning well, and by now many hungry people had arrived. "Use the gas!" came the idea we would later lament. No big deal. So Allison's sister's boyfriend and I are discussing geek things like Palm Pilots and his job with a prestigious computer company, when all of a sudden something fell from the bottom of the grill... In the corner of my eye I can see it glowing red, so I take a look. It's the propane regulator! As quick as I can I leap over the stairway and grab the glowing piece and toss it into the grass. And as if in one single movement was at the knob of the propane tank turning it off. The second it was off I heard the tank suck in the flame, but luckily I had already cut off the gas.
In hind sight : WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING? I got lucky and may have actually saved someone, but damn, that could have easily been the end of TaintedTex.
I was pretty manic all night - not irritating manic or anything, I just had a lot of enery/got a lot done. Did my homework, went out for coffee, came home ... to find a boy in my house.
See, it's normally not a problem to find a person of either gender in my house at any time of day or night. However, when my psuedo-roommate's boyfriend is out of town and she's actually around, it's not a good thing.
She defines herself by the men who are around, for a number of reasons in her past that are not within her control. However ...
When a man is in the house and he's REMOTELY attractive, she turns into uber-flirt mode. Normally, I can deal with it (although she *is* planning on marrying her current boyfriend, and I can see some obvious potential problems if her flirting gets out of control - she's monogamously challenged).
Last night, I couldn't. We all watched a movie in my room (the guy's a friend of mine, too). I thought it would be cool - she'd slept with this guy, but it was almost two years ago. I was wrong.
They spent the entire night flirting and acting like I was intruding when THEY were the ones invading my bed.
As the manic started to wear off, the depressive hit. I broke down, in an ugly, ugly way. However, because I'm also kind of obsessive, I can't let people see me cry, so they didn't see most of it.
Not that they would have cared.
I'm starting to question the value of that friendship ... and I'm neither manic nor depressed today. I just have to wonder what kind of friend actually makes me think that I'd have to grow a dick to have any sort of permanent value in her life.
I'm so sick of this shit.
I need to get a stable friend or two.
back | days | front
9:05 CET
I've finally succumbed to the temptation of noding whilst on a business trip...
I hate being here. We have to stand up for 90% of this tradeshow, with the other 10% comprising of walking or lifting heavy boxes. I suppose we have to do it to get the business however...
I'm at IBC, a broadcast industry tradeshow where Sony executives shake hands with the heads of the BBC, salespeople try to sell things that they don't understand and I have to use this icky laptop.
As with many stressful situations in my life, I've found myself daydreaming more and more over the past week. I've been accused in the past of not paying attention by managers and friends. That is because I am not. I would rather be saving princesses, forming amazing eco companies that solve world pollution problems, writing amazing software or travelling to distant stars. This isn't to say that I don't consider what people are saying to be unimportant, but just sometimes I want to be elsewhere.
I had a wonderful moment on the train from Schiphol to RAI station; The perfect ambient beauty of global communication's 14:32 started echoing through my mind. Suddenly, I wasn't sitting on an uncomfortable train seat, I was floating in zero gravity in a huge space station with music all around me and a pristine unspoilt ocean planet looming huge in the viewing window. It's a little worrying to me that I can shut myself off from reality so totally, to the point where people can be trying to get my attention with little success.
11:25 CET
Two completely different people
I said to my two managers: "I want to try and pack up our show equipment completely tonight so that I can spend some time in Amsterdam central tomorrow morning before flying home."
My Project Leader thinks "Why the hell do you think you can slack off tomorrow when you're still on company time. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that you don't get any free time from now on."
My General manager thinks "Good, dizzy has realised that to have fun later he has to put in extra effort now. I commend him on his priorities. He has been working hard and deserves to have a little free time."
Mental Note: My project leader is a bastard. He always has been and always will be. The best I can do is to turn the other cheek.
17:30 CET
Group Euphoria
There is only half an hour left of the trade show. Right now, there is a strange kind of group euphoria spreading among everyone on the Sony stand. Normally dour people are smiling, taciturn and withdrawn people are cracking jokes and laughing with child-like abandon. It's almost like a mass hysteria is gripping everyone here.
it's almost as though my feet have stopped hurting. It is so strange that my mental state has such an effect on my physical well-being
Afternoon...
I had a strange dream last night, not enough to make a dream log I guess... I had (when I was awake =) written E-mail to my friend that night, and I dreamed that when I logged on to the mail machine and typed "from", I saw mail from a weird-adressed sender. It had an odd domain name, I think, but from the user part of the address, I knew that this was him. =)
(But in RL, I haven't got a reply - at least not via E-mail. So there.)
Some thoughts today that escaped my mentioning in yesterday: Many corporations still seem to favor "closed-source" programs. But the UML is the trend now, right? Unified Modelling Language, designed to avoid confusion when designing those awfully complicated systems. I heard UML's strength is that it's same everywhere (U in UML). Now, does this make stealing business plans easier, or what? "Good heavens", says the Management. =)
I have realized something through these OO courses: Design is important, and as the old boring comment goes, what is well designed is already half done... I just need to a) pick a design method that fits for me, and b) if the method says "don't do this with a computer", try to do it with a computer. =)
I have been hearing "Good programmer starts the project on paper without the computer" so many times, but I disagree. Why paper when we have GNU Dia and LyX? =)
I found something cool - something titled "RSA encryption, decryption and key generation with Perl/dc/gp", by Vipul Ved Prakash. An obfuscated RSA program shaped like... a dolphin. Sadly, only a few people truly understand dolphins, and this probably won't help... *g*
I updated my home page. Mostly reorganizing the studies-related Stuff, new directory for the digital media course, and stuff like that. Minor tweaks.
I made a picture for the home node - in case I, for some reason, get to level where I can put picture to my home node. Well, actually, I had the picture already inked; I just colored it now, using - of course - GIMP...
I got bored so I made a sirc script for handling E2 exclusively. Maybe I'll now start frequenting #everything. =) The script is just a quick hack that works for me (supposedly); if it blows up when you use it, please mail me. =)
Finished just before midnight - and uncovered a bug in GNU Recode while doing so: Recode translates " (single quote) to " when using html4 encoding. They bastards. Last time I checked, HTML 4.0 deprecated "... or was it something else that got deprecated?
Maybe recode would need an "Everything HTML encoding" that would, for example, translate [ and ] to [ and ] and so on...
I just noticed that I had used two Perl scripts - one of the first Perl scripts I wrote back in 1996 - until this month when I finally got Recode. Speak of dusty, dusty old programs. See? Legacy code isn't a necessary evil, it's evil that just simply hides. =)
Other day logs o' mine...
Noded today: from Everything2 support for sirc my first perl program
Yesterday, gave in to the hysteria and bought a couple of Olympics t-shirts and pins ("Handcrafted in China"). Don't know what came over me. Saw pins of the 2000 Games in combination with those of the past e.g. Sydney 2000 plus London 1948 consists of the Australian flag and the Union Jack. There's a strange one for Sydney 2000 + Berlin 1936: strange in that instead of using what was the German flag of 1936 (the Third Reich's red, black and white swastika ensign?) it has the post-Wall unified Germany flag of today. Same with the pin for Moscow 1980--not the contemporary red and gold hammer-and-sickle but post-Communism's CIS tricolour.
Went to Circular Quay on Sunday. The last time I was there was late afternoon New Year's Eve 1999, when many thousands of people were already there, waiting for the fireworks; and a giant cursive "Eternity" in lighting and fireworks was on the side of the Harbor Bridge where the Olympic rings logo is now. On Sunday a triathlon trial run had just taken place. Pink buoys in Farm Cove. Police and sightseers everywhere, Hungarian athletes having their picture taken against the background of the Opera House sails.
A very large Olympics logo banner is suspended from a crane at the Naval Dockyards beyond Farm Cove. A huge representation of the 5 rings has been installed in Martin Place, and from time to time a fog of dry ice emerges from gratings in the ground at its base. There's a continuous blue line painted on the roads of the marathon route, for the runners to follow. "LOOK LEFT" AND "LOOK RIGHT" have been stencilled on the road surface at pedestrian crossings, like in London. Because of the Olympics, Daylight Saving began in the state of New South Wales on August 27, about seven or eight weeks earlier than it usually has in other years. So now it's Summer Time and it's not even spring yet.
September 9, 2000September 14, 2000September 15, 2000September 18, 2000September 24, 2000September 29, 2000September 30, 2000October 1, 2000October 2, 2000
Subway Log
I am waiting in the Berkeley BART, around midnight. This older man (short white ponytail under a faded purple baseball cap, white beard, gold-rimed eyeglasses, grey windbreaker, grey pants, large backpack) sits down next to me on the bench, but facing the other way and he flips through the discarded newspaper . . . "Did you go to the Solano Stroll yesterday?" "Um, no." "You know where Solano is, right?" "Oh yeah, in Albany." "Albany-Berkeley. It was great. You would have loved it. A great number of townspeople, jugglers, strollers about. Great." "Hmm." "It was really nice. What we need to do is get rid of the fucking cars. All the fucking cars." "That is true." "They're just a fucking mess. No one needs cars, they should walk. And bike." "No argument here." He belches repeatedly as he walks down the platform. He comes back, too soon. "Did you see a movie? tonight?" "Um, yeah." "What movie?" "For a Few Dollars More." "What?" "For a Few Dollars More." "What?" "A Fistfull of Dollars." "Oh. A Spaghetti Western." "Yeah, Sergio Leone directing Clint Eastwood." "I saw The Art of War. Second time. You seen it yet? Great movie." "Quite a recommendation, to talk to someone who has seen it twice." "Yeah. What do you do for work?" "I have an office job." "I'm a consultant." "Hmm." "What's your name?" "(name changed to protect the innocent)" "Mine's Daniel." "Nice to meet you." "When's your birthday?" "April." "April what?" "Twenty-third." "Taurus." "Yep." "I'm Taurus too. May ninth." "Oh." The distinguished moves on to accost another loiterer. Presently I hear "Where's the fucking Richmond train?"
The revised version, pointing out my proficiency on a variety of stringed instruments and woodwinds, was also a flop.
The next version, the one that mentioned that I invented Perl, Java, and C#, did the trick; I was wined and dined by many large corporations (and, boy, can they pack it away!), before I decided on the winner, a European publisher that offered many fine perks, including mistresses and inclusion in the Royal Family of Norwegia.
You must, at least inside the borders of Norwegia, address me as "Your Eminence". Got it? I'm told that I now have diplomatic immunity here in New York City, and can get vouchers from the embassy to defray the cost of living next door to my new drinking buddy, Donald Trump.
I must go buy additional beds for the mistresses.
