Journal |
Saturday, September 15, 2001
Friday, June 22, 2001
Well it seems that my fears weren’t * entirely * unfounded. My co. swapped CEO’s yesterday ( a bad sign ) and I had a lunch with several co-workers who informed me that the situation was probably worse than I had thought w/r/t customer retention. Yesterday wasn’t a total loss though – The events that transpired during the evening more than made up for the lackluster workday. I went to a birthday party thrown by a 22 yearold friend. It was an interesting lot, and knowing that she works at apple I was hoping for possible job leads from geeks. (It never hurts to be prepared . . ) Anyway the party was far from the salon-type atmosphere I expected. Everyone was pretty riotous, and about halfway through some guy showed up dressed in a fireman’s outfit, lodged an axe into a table and started doing a stripdance. No shit. I figured not much would happen that could beat that- So I left after the half-naked dancing fireman finished. Thursday, June 07, 2001
It’s funny how the pace at work can go from a blisteringly frustrating dead out run to an absolute stop within the space of a day. Yesterday I was pulling my hair out, and now I really don’t have much to do. In other news, the day before yesterday was my birthday. My 27’th to be exact. I had dinner /w the father ( who is in town on a vacation which was defiantly a notch up from last year. I pretty much forgot the b-day last year, till a week after the actual date. The thing is, I don’t really like birthdays. Or Christmas. Or any holiday that purports to wrap something significant (the passing of a year, the crucifixion of a fellow who all things aside, seemed to be quite pleasant) into one day. And on another, completely unrelated note- I continue to dread the effects of the current economic situation on my company. I have dreams about my company closing, dreams in which salespeople are whispering about the lack of interest in what we do, etc. It’s sort of nerve wrenching. Friday, May 18, 2001
05/18/01 So I’m about to take off for some retreat that I was incredibly interested in 2 months ago when I paid 80 dollars for it. I now have next to no interest at all in going, and one of my best friends is visiting from out of town. And I can’t decide what to do. . . I'm thinking about ditching it. I don't like the idea of paying 80 dollars for nothing though. Hmmph. Friday, May 11, 2001
As is sort of par for the course, Austin is beginning to get quite hot. I’m not noticing it as much as I have in previous years. I’ve actually been ignoring most everything, feeling a bit reclusive. I have been buying a lot of music recently. In the last week I’ve picked up and become obsessed with- 1.) Mare Vitalis, Appleseed Cast The sad thing is I should have had the DeathCab CD a long time ago, but I was evil. I napsterized a bunch of songs from them and have been listening to MP3’s. It’s really interesting to listen to it now though, because a lot of songs on the napster network are recorded live, and the difference between the produced song and the song played live is significant. In some cases (scientist studies) I like live versions that I’ve heard more that the produced versions. In other cases, it’s t’other way around. My company is having an event called the “Spring Fling”. No more needs be to said about this. My fathers birthday and Mothers day are coming up. I’ve gone the Amazon (read: lazy) route in recognizing both of these events. Bleach. Thursday, April 19, 2001
While the first day of my v-ction stood out, the middle kind of blended together, but in a really pleasant way. A good friend of mine from New York flew out to stay with me for a week, and I picked her up on the evening of the second day. My father owns a Lloyd –Wrightish house 15 minutes outside of Madison- It’s really beautiful. Because he was out of town, we got to stay there and it was really idyllic. The weather was cooperative (for the most part) making the countryside a really nice place to be. Here’s the really great thing though, the specifically great thing about my friend from NY. Y’know how people are eventually a pain in the ass? How it’s impossible to spend too much time with any one person without wanting to huck? She’s sort of the one exception I’ve found to this rule. It’s really awfully strange- we spent 6 days together 24/7 and I wasn’t annoyed at all. Some Things We Did- 1.) Purchase Madison Paraphernalia. Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Back from the vacation- What a relaxing time. But not all of it I guess- To begin with the beginning- I got to the Austin airport and boarded my plane without issue- checked the bags and all. Yadda yadda. I then proceeded to sit on the plane (without it moving) for two hours. Here’s the funny thing about the delays- The captain was detailing ~everything~ to us. Every 20 minutes we’d be told that we were clear to fly into Chicago only to be told several minutes later that we would have to wait again. The pilot explained that there was a new airline policy that required the passengers to be updated along with the pilot and then sort of rambled on about how he thought the policy was probably a bad idea. It was sort of funny to listen to him- he obviously enjoyed talking and went on @ length about how Mother Nature was showing us who the boss really was. We finally took off, but by the time we reached Chicago, the weather had taken another foul turn. We couldn’t land. Another hour, flying in circles, was tacked onto the trip. By the time we landed, there were no more flights out of Chicago to Madison. The queue to book another flight was at least 100 people long. I was lucky- I have a good friend who works as a flight attendant in Chicago. I gave her a call and got the okay to come stay with her. That evening was a whole helluva lot of fun. In no particular order, I 1.) Ate cabbage and beef from a local polish food store. (My friend lived in a poor portion of Chicago, mainly populated by poles) By the time the evening was over I was exhausted. I crashed, woke up early to drive my friend to the airport for her stewardessing duties. Lucky for me, she let me borrow her car to drive to Madison. And this was pretty much all in the first 24 hours of my vaykay. I'll drop more as I'm motivated to write it out. Thursday, April 12, 2001
Things that have happened on my vacation so far- 1.) I've had an unxepected stay in chicago. The rest will be detailed upon my arrival home. Friday, April 06, 2001
I am really bored right now- There is still absolutely nothing to do at work and yet I feel compelled to stay. I think I might try to sneak off at 4:00 and start my vacation a ‘lil bit early. I’ve already taken a long lunch, with a bunch of the developers- we went to cong li, which is this Vietnamese noodle place on 6th. The food was great but now I’m really tired. That in addition to the fact that there is absolutely nothing to do is making me itchy to bolt. Hmm. List of the day- Really Good Songs Enqueued in Winamp. 1.)Alphabet Town, Elliot Smith. Thursday, April 05, 2001
I’m leaving for a vacation in two days and have been pretty lax about getting ready to go. I haven’t really started to pack yet, or clean my house. Both are things I like to do before leaving home for any extended period of time. I’ve been significantly less stressed as the week tumbles towards Friday. The layoffs last Friday pumped my adrenaline up a little bit and I’m sort of slowly backing away from the endocrinological cliff. One thing that is kind of bothering me is this- When everyone got laid off last week, workloads were transferred and everything basically shuffled around. There was a lot of work to be done but noone knew where to route it. This means, that come Monday there will be a lot to get done- I can’t decide whether I should vpn in and work over my vacation or not. Hmmm. Tuesday, April 03, 2001
My back feels much better today- This is pretty huge. Persistent pain makes it difficult to concentrate, makes one perpetually grumpy and generally clouds up a normally cheery disposition. Not that my disposition is normally cheery or anything, but . . I’ll probably take it for granted in a couple of days but right now I’m happy that my lower back doesn’t hurt anymore. I did kind of have trouble sleeping last night- I think it’s because I’m relatively sure the company I’m @ now is about to fold. I remembered a lot of my dreams though, because I was constantly waking up during them. One of my dreams involved a play. I was acting in a scene on a stage and was pretty worried because I didn’t know the lines to the second half of the play. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I remember trying to think of ways out of it. In the end, it turned out I didn’t really have much of a part anyway. I remember being relieved. Monday, April 02, 2001
So I should probably start out by saying that I haven't been laid off. I was anxious for about 3 hours, after which I realized that if I was going to be laid off I would have already been walked to the door. The rest of the day was pretty much a wash. I hung around til 3, and then took off. The thing that's really bothering me this weekend is my back. I hesitate to even mention it for fear of sounding geriatric, but it hurts. I'm walking funny. Last night I played minature golf with a large group of people (~7) and just kind of limped around the course, scowling at ceramic squirrels and pigs. I've tried- 1.)Asprin I havn't tried The reason I mention this is because Doan's sticks in my head from commercials about back pain. In fact it's the only thing I really remember an advertisement for that was specifically targeted towards back pain. But I couldn't find any. So it was asprin and icy hot. Also- It was beautiful today. The most beautiful day in months and months. But I couldn't go out and play tennis- I could hardly get in and out of my car. Additionally it was playing tennis that started the whole thing, so in attempting to avoid exacerbation of the injury I'm avoiding tennis. Plffh.
Friday, March 30, 2001
Geez. Layoffs today. 40 people- Havn't found out whether or not I'm getting axed yet. This would be the 2nd time in 5 months. . . Wednesday, March 21, 2001
As much as I would like to deny it, I’m kind of lazy when it comes to fashion. Example- There’s this watch I got for Christmas, with faux gold plating ( I can’t imagine that it’s real ) and a tacky leather strap. My digital watch had broken, and I told myself that I’d wear it until I had time to buy a new $10.00 digital watch. But it works- The watch works. And because it tells the time, I can’t bother myself to go out and buy a new one- I mean I’ve already got a watch. Even though it looks really funny with everything else I wear (picture a gold watch with baggy jeans and a tee-shirt), I can’t be bothered to take the time to go to a drug store and get a plain one. So it’s either that I value function over form, or that I’m lazy. Hmm. Funny thing I head this week: A disk jocky calling south by southwest “south by south mess” For some reason it struck me as funny, even though it wasn’t very clever or anything. Friday, March 16, 2001
Everything seems to be going to pot. The economy is such that I’m neurotic about my new job, which is much more stable than my old job but not stable enough to weather the worst of economic storms I fear. That said, if everything does crash I’m probably just going to not work for a while. SXSW is going on, which would putatively be fun. This year though, is a bit of a wash. I’ve seen several bands, but none of them were spectacular enough to make the stifling crowds and smoke filled rooms worthwhile. Perhaps if they had been playing in open fields, surrounded by daisies. I saw death cab for cutie last night, which wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be. a.) There was one member of the band that had the monitors on his vocals and guitar turned up louder than everyone else. He threw off the balance of all of the songs. I didn’t like it. As much as I disparage all of this I’m probably still going to try to catch one or two more bands. Yadda yadda. Wednesday, February 28, 2001
Oh my fucking god. What a day. To start out with, I get rear ended by some dolt on the access road to the access road to I-35. Basically I’m at a stop sign, waiting to get onto the access road to I-35 and all of a sudden there’s a huge thud and my coffee is all over the place. But wait- it gets better. So I pull ahead and pull over, and out of this utexas-edu car gets a groundskeeper for the university of texas, a bit spherical, eyes full of tears. He’s apologizing rapid fire in Spanish and English. I feel shitty for him, and tell him not to worry about it. This is after I’ve inspected my bumper and determined that the extent of the damage is an imprint from one of the screws on his license plate holder. My car stinks like coffee now though. There’s this sort of joke-like thing in Austin - people who live here can’t drive. Well they can’t. Don’t move here if you have a car. It's not worth the angst. Thursday, February 22, 2001
This week has been pretty packed but because things are a little bit slow at work it hasn’t seemed to be too harried. Maybe that’s why I’ve had energy to be so active. On Monday, after finishing a pretty uneventful day at work, I relieved stress by playing tennis with a group of people at Caswell tennis center. It was theoretically a “workout” and we certainly did get a good measure of aerobic exercise in. There was one exercise in particular where a ball was hit to either side of the court, and one had to chase it down. The number of balls hit increased until one had to run after 12 consecutive balls hit to either side of the court. I also ended up playing on Tuesday evening- with a friend bob. He’s quite good, so that even though we only played for an hour, I got a significant workout. After this we rushed off to see “Meet The Parents”- It was playing for 2.00 at the Alamo Drafthouse, a movie theatre that serves beer and food. Good deal all in all- and the movie was considerably funnier than I thought it would be. For two dollars though- quite a deal. On Weds, a little bit more tennis. This last Sunday through Weds tennis streak probably has something to do with my right arm feeling like rubber. Anyway, this time I only played from 7:00 to 9:00. Although I played longer, the pace was quite a bit slower than it is with Bob, so I didn’t get as significant a workout as I would have with Bob. Wednesday, February 14, 2001
So I went to see death cab for cutie concert - It was really good. Even though I was drastically tired (not used to being up @ 1:00 on a tuesday, and that's when they went on) I stayed for the whole thing. When I was driving home, north on colorado street, a possum walked out in front of my car and stopped. I was able to come to a complete stop before getting near the guy. The thing is, he just sat there and stared at me for a while. He gave me this opposum look, just locked it in. I waited, mabye a minute, and then honked my horn. He skittered off and I finished driving home. I was definatly tired this morning, but all in all it was a good night. Tuesday, January 30, 2001
Oop- la. Today is just one of those days I don’t want to be at work at all. I have a particularly adversarial co-worker who made most of yesterday and the first half of today really tense. Why can’t everyone just get along? Hm? I’m thinking about putting sedatives in the drinking water here- Hell, maybe throughout Texas. Perhaps people would stop being so interested in guns, the execution of prisoners and such. Get arrested for being a latter day abbie hoffman. Tuesday, January 23, 2001
I swear, I can’t read the paper anymore. Every morning the headlines make me cringe. Bush is cutting off funds to family planning groups overseas that provide education and counseling about abortion, or he’s planning to spend trillions on the wealthy, or he’s planning to beef up our military. All of it just makes me angry and sad. Not such a good way to start the day. As much as I don’t want to abandon the daily paper, I just might have to do just that to maintain some semblance of tranquility in the morning. Friday, January 19, 2001
So for the first several weeks, I had very little to do at work. For the last three weeks, I’ve had more than I can do. A little bit stressful, but not too bad. Today is the first time there isn’t anything that’s immediately pressing. Yesterday my company had a kickoff party at the Alamo draft house, an old movie theatre where you can eat food and drink beer and generally be merry while watching movies. I generally enjoy going there, but this “kickoff party” affected me the way most “rah rah” meetings do- I was ready to go to sleep. It was about 4 hours long, but I snuck out 2 hours early, walked about a mile back to work and drove home at 4. I felt like a bit of a slacker, but figured I wasn’t doing anyone a disservice by missing this particular meeting. There was a party afterwards, which I also opted out of. Much of it was supposed to be outdoors, and for Austin, it was a chilly night. I guess my attitude yesterday was generally lethargic.
So for the first several weeks, I had very little to do. For the last three weeks, I’ve had more than I can do. A little bit stressful, but not too bad. Today is the first time there isn’t anything that’s immediately pressing. Yesterday my company had a kickoff party at the Alamo draft house, an old movie theatre where you can eat food and drink beer and generally be merry while watching movies. I generally enjoy going there, but this “kickoff party” affected me the way most “rah rah” meetings do- I was ready to go to sleep. It was about 4 hours long, but I snuck out 2 hours early, walked about a mile back to work and drove home at 4. I felt like a bit of a slacker, but figured I wasn’t doing anyone a disservice by missing this particular meeting. There was a party afterwards, which I also opted out of. Much of it was supposed to be outdoors, and for Austin, it was a chilly night. I guess my attitude yesterday was generally lethargic. Thursday, December 28, 2000
I’ve had a productive morning so far. I woke up at 6:30 to go feed a friends cats before getting into work, and once I got there, went through an exhaustive reorginization of all my insurance, 401k, dental, banking stuff. What an incredible pain in the ass. I know that all of these plans serve to benefit those who participate in them, but the paperwork is incredible. It’s an organizational nightmare if you ever actually try to implement anything, subform B of primary care form A is needed to get started. Honestly, in this age of online crap, one would think that at least SOME of the paperwork would be done away with. I think I remember reading that more paper is actually being used now than was being used 10 years ago. (Sigh). Anyway, I’ve been taking a break, making grumpy cat dance. Too much fun. At least for the first couple seconds. Tuesday, December 26, 2000
12/26/00 10:55 am. It's the day after Christmas- I’ve spent pretty much the entire holiday sans people, surrounded only by cats. I couldn’t really visit home, due to having just found a job after globeset.com crashed. My roomate took off for wisconsin (where I am also from.) At first I was a bit jealous, but it’s actually been pretty cheerful, the whole Christmas thing. For one thing, the cats (all five of them) really got into my eggnog pancake idea on Christmas morning, and helped me finish off what I decided I was too full to eat. Additionally, it was sort of neat to have a Christmas morning in relative silence. I know this is kind of perverse, and that most spend Christmas surrounded by bustling family members and such, but I kind of liked the silence and calm throughout the house. If it had been snowing, It would have been perfect. This, of course, is a lot to ask from Texas but I’m convinced that it was meant to snow. It was raining quite a bit- It was just the temperature that wasn’t cooperating. Anyway, after a brief four days off, here I am back at work. Monday, December 18, 2000
12.18.00 I’ve had a particularly languid weekend. Pretty much literally in that I sort of laid around and didn’t do much at all. Probably the highlight of my weekend was a Sunday screening of the movie ( Bounce ) with Ben Affleck and G. Paltrow. The reason that I probably liked it so much was that I was expecting so little- I mean the television commercial made the film look horrible and the only reason I decided to go was a series of incredible reviews from several papers of repute, or at least papers that I find generally reputable when it comes to reviewing films. (Nytimes) I liked it because the characters weren’t flawless. For the converse reason I walked out about half way through “sleepless in seattle”. But these characters, written by Don Roos (Opposite of Sex) were far from perfect. One, a recovering alcoholic, the other, lying about various and sundry miscellany. The thing is, I actually felt like these were characters that I might have known- Real people. So I was sucked into it. Thursday, December 14, 2000
So I have a workmate who is excellent at distinguishing between hp and opp- her problems and other people’s problems. I’ve seen those skilled at making this particular distinction before and noticed that it always serves them well. If they don’t take responsibility for it they will not be chastised. I have a bad habit of taking personal responsibility for everything. The problem with this is that once you act as if you are responsible for a thing, people kind of perceive you as being responsible for it. So if you act responsible for everything, even things that are beyond your control, people will kind of hold you accountable for those things. Much better to make a clean delineation between what one is responsible for and what one is not responsible for.
12.14.2000 8:58 am. The ankle is improving. I was a bit too impressed by the dramatic improvement from Monday to Tudesday though, I think. The ankle, after 3 days, finally showed some bruising ( the weird kind of bruising that you get when you screw something up pretty badly- purple and splotchy ) and it still hurts a bit when I walk. I think it’ll probably take several months to fully heal, which is bad news for me, because that means I’ll not be able to play tennis at all. Ah well . Wednesday, December 13, 2000
Small update. That industrial power grid? Apparently not so indefatigable. Power just went out for like five minutes and all the java application servers running on our test unix servers are totally screwed. So I’m not going to be testing the work I’ve done this morning, at least for a little while.
So Austin got a little bit of ice and everyone freaked out. I went home at 3:00 yesterday (by mandate of the CEO) and came in at about 9:30 this morning. The funny thing is that the roads weren’t frozen. Even at 12:00 am, the middle of the night, the roads were just fine- no problem driving at all. I visited a good friend to watch a flick and made a drive home without any problem- great traction. I thought it kind of funny, all the hullabaloo made about the ice, and no problems at all. The thing is, there were problems- but not on the roads. This morning, all of the power has gone out around Austin, in patches. I was pretty sure, driving to work, that the power would be out in my building as well- All the traffic lights were off and none of the stores or restaurants on the street open. But everything was fine. Apparently we are on an “industrial power grid”, whatever that is. The thing I don’t get is why the traffic lights wouldn’t be on it as well? I mean aren’t functioning traffic lights kind of important? I dunno. Tuesday, December 12, 2000
12/12/00 10.57 am So I’m having a much better day than I was yesterday. Yesterday I was convinced that any kind of good luck I was encountering had come to an end. Having twisted my ankle pretty badly on Sunday, I decided to blow 75 bucks on x-rays to make sure the ankle was okay (I’m not yet covered by my insurance yet). I spent about 2 hours at the doctor, which stunk because I really needed to be at work- There was a problem that should have taken 5 minutes and had (up to that point) taken about 4 hours. So after the doctor and everything I spent ANOTHER four hours working on this thing which should take no time at all and took a lot of time. And I didn’t finish it. I left work at about 6:00 ( This is where things start going well again ) to go see the comedian paula poundstone perform at a benefit for the The Texas Freedom Network, the TFN being an organization that tries to counter the political influence of the religious right. Well the crowd was a bit stodgy but the stand up was hilarious. I won’t even try to do it justice by attempting recapitulation- take my word for it though- Funny funny. I couldn’t quite get out of my head that I really ought to have finished my ‘lil task at work though, it being my third week and all. I kind of wanted to impress. Today? Everything right in the world. Ankle feels about 75% better. I still limp, and it hurts when I walk, but the shooting pains are gone. Good to be rid of the shooting pains. Additionally, I finished the really annoying pesky task that had been bugging me all yesterday in about an hour. Whew. I hope the rest of the week follows suit /w Tuesday, not Monday.  |
