Tit for Tat

I would argue that asymetrical shaped breasts would increase productivity severalfold. I mean, you want to look them in the eye, but there's 10 million years of evolution burning within exhorting us to reach out and grab any pair of even nominally symetrical breasts. It's really a feat of will power that all we do is stare at them. If you bring in asymetry, suddenly we're not so impeded by nature's urgings. Suddenly we know what color our coworker's eyes are.

I Itch

I found a bug or feature in bloglines system. It turns out that, most intelligently, bloglines caches a local copy of any suscribed blog and polls locally when you visit. Problem is that they do not track post deletions. So if you post something and delete it after bloglines refreshes it's cache of your blog, that deleted post is forever being shown to bloglines suscribers. They do seem to notice when you update.

Question is, what is the proper behavior? Should bloglines keep a cache of the currently public facing posts only? I want to say yes, I mean, if they are already diffing updates everytime they refreash, it would be grossly trivial to remove posts that are no longer public.

White?

I answer my parents' phone: "Hello"; "Bueno hablo con serpienton por favor". Imagine my confusion at someone calling for "snake". No no no, I say, no we here are God fearing goodly people, you won't find any snakes here.

Well, apparently my Dad, during his oil rig days, was known primarily as snake... Just when I thought I had this family pegged...

Photo's Available Upon Request

I proudly acknowledge my participation in our High Schools Webdev team. The Business Professionals of America hold an annual competition for fake business websites. We got 3rd in the state, with the first 2 going to nationals. We were heartbroken, but thats niether here nor there.

In Kingsville, and South Texas in general, 4H is huge. Jesus huge. Our high school was given a 4 day weekend for whatever big event those 4H folks held every year. Our web development team took advantage of those four days ( five days, if you count the wednesday we all played hooky) to do what can only be called hardcore web development. We gathered all of our respective machines into one home, networked them together and worked our asses off for a solid 5 days. Code, fall asleep, wake up at some point, go to Lydia's for breakfast, repeat. We smelled, we were tired, and we produced a solid result.

I also proudly acknowledge my handful of corporate internships. I am valued by our industry. My time is worth an average 25$ an hour + free soda according to the men with checks. I have spent a lot of time I should have been in class in an office coding for some project or other, also, usually, producing a solid result.

I value the memory of the former far more. With the exception of the people working has put in my life I really don't feel any furthured by my experiences in an office. I miss that sweaty leather couch.

Not sure what this is

Why is a real relationship so rare?

Most of the dating pairs you'll find aren't actually in love or looking to get in love, opting for the more comfortable path of least resistance. They choose to settle on passing off consistant company for true feelings, or aren't even bothering to delude themselves and remain with someone they overtly feel nothing if not dislike towards. It's very understandable for anyone even remotely human; I am all to familiar with the power potential loneliness wields. Attaching to someone seems like a good panacea.

The rub, however, becomes evident when you consider the sum happiness these folks seem to be enjoying. People are miserable. Everyone is miserable. Miserable and, ipso facto I guess, dependant on whatever company they find nearby, usually some significant other who they realized wasn't right for them eons ago.

Everyone is just settling! Why won't anyone do the leg work, or just the waiting, to find a real connection, a real attachment, real, valuable affection? How can you possibly know when it's real anymore either? Is the opposite person just settling like everyone else; are you? How do you know anyone actually gives a shit?

Maybe if you don't know, they don't. Ugh, It makes me so angry. Whats real? Nothing is real, fuck you. It dullens every experience, I can't suspend disbelief.

Whew...

4 posts in 1 day. That is a lot of blogging, to be sure. Allow me to offer you an analogy you'll likely find offensive: I blog like a man has sex. I start slowly then build up to a sudden climax where I shotgun my viscous posts all over the screen. Afterwards I enjoy a dormant period where blogging and any related activities are the furthest thing from my mind so stop god-damned bothering me. I have a sandwich, watch some tv, and move on with life. Then some image in some form of media stirs my desires within and I soon begin to blog once again.

Anyway, I'm off to smoke a cigarette. (sometimes I wish I smoked so I could have that particular experience)

T-Rex, T-Bag, Waves, Brownie...you fucking name it.

So Dylan, Austin, and myself are at Tazza enjoying a pipe and fanciful descriptions of what Dylan and I will do to make our new apartment great. Austin gets a call from T-bag and in the middle is compelled to walk out of earshot. Of course my curiosity was piqued. Eventually I found out that Waves Bitch was calling to discuss, amongst other things, I am sure, his gift to me. I long before knew that as long as I never again wake up and open my bedroom door to find T-bag shirtless anything he would do would bring a smile to my face. So I became excited.

When I was a child my parent's had a hell of a time hiding gifts from me during the holidays. I was mobile, agile, and hostile when it came to the premature acquisition of gifts. As I gained skill they had to store gifts at the Garcia house, a family friend since before I built memories. Unfortunately I had my spies there as well and eventually they hid the presents at houses where I had no friends my age. I think at one point my dad hid a BB gun for my birthday in his office.

Without any means of getting to the presents I satisfied myself with figuring out what they would be. They didn't know it but my parent's, from Thanksgiving to Christmas were under constant questioning. I developed a method of questioning that seems playful and unfruitful while behind it all I was grabbing at scraps of information I would use to deduce what they were dancing around. Even stone cold silence was a treasure trove of information. There was nothing they could do. I remember one year I put together a wish list and gave it to my mother well after she had finished her shopping (I could tell because she would actually be enjoying the vacation). I watched as she read it and tried to read her reactions. That year I accurately guessed with close to 80% accuracy. My best year.

Anyway, I eventually grew up and the excitement of Christmas faded. I actively try to avoid getting gifts from my parents and the ones they do get me they usually take me out to choose (Clothes, shoes, consumer electronics on a fat year). So my skills and methods remained dorment for a handful of years.

UNTIL NOW

I seriously am thinking about whatever T-bag got me 24 fucking hours a day. I've already questioned Austin and T-bag enough to have a good idea of what it might be. Unless it's just way out there from left field. They've both dropped what I currently believe to be very salient bits of information.

Tarang, I know you'll read this eventually. Before I see whatever it is, I want to render my final guess. I have that shit narrowed down to 2 things. And I feel confident.

Nail Polish

Monet had his paints, Rodin his stone, Frank Lloyd Wright his blueprints. I have my tangled tapestry of extemporaneous bullshit. Anyone who has known me for more than 10 minutes has been lied to. Nothing serious of course, merely playful anecdotes or fabricated facts I use to entertain myself and those around me. Amongst my favorites are convincing an un-named ex-girlfriend that Viennese immigrant Adolf Whataburger founded the popular fast food chain and sending my brother to the dairy section to get, and this is important, /rooster/ eggs.

So a few days ago a handful of us were watching Lost in Sarah's apartment. Now, Sarah, for those of you who havn't had the pleasure, is in fact a girl. As such various female accouterments were strewn about her apartment. So my mind wandered as it often does and I found myself painting my left thumbnail with "Royal Passion" polish that I encountered on a end table. Whenever someone asked me why I responded with "I was bored".

Then I had a much better idea. I decided that I would generate an entirely original bullshit reason for painting my thumbnail every time someone asked me about it. So far I have these:

1. "In high school a buddy of mine passed away of cancer. We all wear this as a memorial. Since he died so young it really struck us that we need to live life to it's fullest every single ...blah blah blah"
2. "It was the color a girl I tried to pull from traffic was wearing" (this story came complete with the display of a scar on my knee I got when my hip was clipped and my knee struck the curb. The scar is actually from endoing into a creek.)
3. "To make a long story short, I won't tell it"
4. "I decided to try stand up comedy and promised myself that if I bombed five times in a row (showing five fingers) I would walk away. I've bombed once (showing painted thumb)"
5. "It's personal"
6. "I can't take it off until the suit settles"
7. "I am working on this peice on the piano. For some reason that thumb is always a key off so I painted it so I could 'watch' it in my periphery while reading the music"
8. "I'm a fifth gay"

Stories number 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 actually convinced their recipients. =-D

On The Road Again

Seattle-Austin (Via Cali): 3000 miles
Austin-McAllen: 318 miles
McAllen-Austin:318 Miles
Austin-Houston: 161
Houston-Austin:161
Austin-Houston:161
Houston-Austin:161

Total miles driven in the last month: 4924. If you throw in the 2700 miles for the drive up to Seattle, the total is 7624 miles. The not so hidden message is I am incredibly sick of driving long distances. So much so that I am actually bemoaning the need to go back to McAllen for Christmas. I looked up some last minute airfare but it's just to high, even given the premium I place on not having to drive. So I am damned to another round trip to the Valley, with permanency in Austin on the other end.

It's actually not so bad. Those of you out there who've done the long road trip know that you get inured to the miles after your first few thousand. McAllen is 4.5 Hours away; there was a time during my trip from Seattle that 4.5 hours away was "almost there". And, of course, I have good food, a warm bed and family to look forward to again. That won't be the case again until, likely, I graduate. So it's really a blessing in disguise, or the drive is like, the beast at the threshold or some such nonsense.

In anycase, if you have a spare two minutes on your hands tonight, give me a buzz. I'll be more than happy to shoot the shit with you. (previous post notwithstanding, of course =-D)

Texting

I've recently discovered text messaging. It all began on the way home from jolly old Seattle when Dave sent me a text message asking me how Portland was, or something to that affect. It wasn't nearly my first. Not only have I recieved the occasional message from various and sundry friends but my job for 4 months at IBM involved tests on various sms related technologies. No Dave's message wasn't unique simply in existance, but it was unique in that it came to me while my mind had relatively limitless time to ponder. While I regarded the short message I decided to take a few hundred miles to consider and weigh the benefits of texting once again, having previously declared my utter hatred for voice calls and bemoaned the inadequacy of texting to serve as a reasonable replacement.

I settled on a decision chartered simply as "Meh, lets give it a whirl" somewhere near the border of Oregon and Portland and decided responding to Dave's message would be a fine maiden voyage. My first endeavour wasn't the greatest experience. I had yet to discover t9 and so I grew instantly frustrated with the input mechanism available to me and decided texting was stupid.

But a seed was planted and Dave got it in his head that texting was a good way to get in touch with me. It's understandable since I've subjected him to my 10 minute rant on how voice calls suck balls and are, if you really think about it, downright rude. I continued to respond to him and, regardless of the insanely designed input mechanism, began to enjoy the freedom to completely ignore him for indefinite amounts of time. Then other folks caught wind of my text-messagability through standing next to me as I responded to others' messages or some such nonsense and they, in turn began to use texting as a means of getting ahold of me.

At this point I am only responding to a small number of messages and had yet to began creating my own messages. When I recently discovered t9, the shit hit the fan. I began writing new messages. So yesterday I realized I was in love with the concept of texting and went to add more text messages to my plan.

Conclusion: Text me unless I want to talk to you. =-D

Sidebar: Tarang pronounces Academic with the accent on the second 'a': a-CAH-demic. Thats some funny shit.

Khoooooong!

I just saw Kong. It was beautiful in ways that hurt me physically. I'm a real sucker for cinematically pleasing movies, regardless of acting, plot, or boobies and I lustfully drank in every scene in Kong. The bug scene was by far the best thing I've seen in a solid decade. The noises, the viscosity, the claws, the shallow dark, the stubborn stance for life and THE MUSIC! Oh my Jesus the music in that scene was so well choosen. Now I know what mankind as a whole felt when it discovered peanut-butter and jelly as a combination. The marriage was abjectly sexy. I would have preferred if they all died during the bug scene in an Alamoesque stand. Alas, the movie just wouldn't have worked.

Also, the monkey should get a god-damned oscar. Don't give me any cinderella men when that 25 foot silverback gave the performance of a millenia. Cheesy as you uppercrusts may find it, when dude tapped his chest to signify "Beautiful", or "Sunrise", or "Must be this tall to ride" it was all I could do to hold back the muffled sobs.

Sidebar: The title to this post was meant as a humerous reference to the Wrath of Khan. I don't think it works....

Will work for food

Well, my first couple of weeks as a homeless man have gone with nary a hitch. I've now crashed at my sister's, sean's, dan and joe's, dave's, matthew's, sarah's, the ACM office and a piano rehearsal room. My mom was in town for some school administration conference a few days back so I also had a few days in the very posh Hilton in downtown Austin. On the day I was sick I actually checked into a low-grade hotel room so I could sleep the entire day and nurse myself to health.

It's an interesting sensation to have no idea where I'm going to sleep next. Though the sensation has been dulled by the instant generosity of my friends here in town. When it comes right down to it I could walk up to anyone's door and inform them I will be sleeping there that night, and they will tolerate me without question. I'm quite blessed, I reckon, when it comes to the people put in my life.

Going ahead I'm on slightly more solid ground. Dave is out of town for the holidays already and tonight I begin to "house-sit" for him. So for the next few days I'll have a bed, and not a moment to soon, either. The past couple of weeks have taken a toll on me when it comes to sore muscles, aching joints and the like. The floors have been unforgiving.

I'm headed back home for The Holiday on Thursday or Friday. I come back Monday, and then it's a mere week until Dylan and I move into the apartment and I can finally be "Home" again. I'm going to talk to the complex tommorrow and see if I can't finaggle an earlier move in for cheapy cheap.

What I want for Christmas

I would never tell my parents, because they would be dumb enough to get this shit for me, what with "loving me" and all:

Knife
Inuit Knife
6 foot bookshelf
That crazy 3d art I saw at the warehouse district (the blue one with stairs)
That crazy 3d art I saw on 5th street (with the "shock" of orange")
Playboy Bartender's Guide
12-gauge shotgun of reputable quality (havn't done the research on this one)
pipe
15-20 cigar humidor
backpacking 2-man tent
Clipless Pedals + Shoes for my bike
Pair of sunglasses

That list is really old, with a couple of new additions. Having had every imaginable need in Maslow's lower few levels met for the majority of my life I get disgusted when I think about asking for presents. And in reality, I will, slowly, acquire all those things myself as excess builds. But to save any self-hatred I just say "underwear" when my dad asks what I want for Christmas.

I need a niche

Everyone in the world is cooler than I am. End of fucking story.

Work

My first week of work at Motive is drawing to an end. So far I havn't done much of anything and have already gone home early once. I have written a few scripts and did some server installs and had to debug several network issues that were blocking me, but the part of my job in the description doesn't begin until monday, assuming I can get what I am doing today done, today.

The folks I am working with are, so far, very good natured. No one on my team is quite as...loud as I would prefer, but I managed to push myself into a twice-weekly basketball game with various and sundry co-workers and a weekly poker game with other various and sundry co-workers.

As always when I change geographic/climatic locations, I got sick recently. Only for about a day though. I got myself a bed and a gallon of orange juice and slept/drank for an entire day/night. That seems to have taken care of the cold =-D.

My Mind Has Officially Wandered

Ask yourself if you would park in a Handicap spot.

Now ask yourself if you would pop a squat in a Handicap stall.


Why is that?

Did you ever miss someone obscure randomly and become inclined to wonder what made you miss that person and then you realize it's because they were black and then you feel like a racist?

Yeah..me neither.

CoWorker: "She's married?"
Me: "Of course she's married, you gotta lock that down!"

Then everyone broke into mirthful laughter and felt a pang guilt as I decided not to inform them it wasn't nearly my joke.

I think they do it when the park closes

How small is the world we live in? Much smaller than those vaguely racist animitronic Armenians in the that Disney ride might have you believe. After getting into Austin yesterday and finishing all the business I had to get done I had some time on my hands before anyone I knew was free to entertainment as I so richly deserved. So I meander down to Tazza for a Chai and an internet connection. A little fact about Tazza: It has two big leather chairs, a sea of unaturally uncomfortable chairs and is never without at least 2 people. You can imagine my glee when I walked in to find one of those chairs empty. After ordering my chai I shlub on down and ask the girl in the other leather chair if it was taken. It wasn't and I sat to begin my internet viewing experience. At some point I glance over at said girl to, admitedly, check her out. My creepy leering was suddenly morphed into a visage of piqued interest when I realized she was wearing a Mindless Self Indulgence sweatshirt. She wound up being the second person I've met who had independently discovered MSI besides me. The first being her boyfriend Ben who rooms with T-bag! I shit you not. We've walked the same ground in points a country apart, barely missing each other for quite some time now. She was actually the one who got Ben into MSI. Anyone who can deal with T-bag is ideally suited to deal with me and we got along swimmingly. Turns out we have discussed each other with Ben and Tarang without ever knowing it. So that was a fun little coincidence. She, Austin, Mateo, and I wound up shooting billiards and paying to much money for poor service and mediocre food.

Also, Sarah, her name, is into Lost, indie flicks and theatre. Thats great for me because I left my lost viewing buddies and compatriot indie flick viewers in Seattle.

So yes, my wooden Bosnian, it is a small world after all.

Moving

The one day that the Texas weather faerie decided to wake up from her "Jager-induced stupor" to realize it is winter and it should be cold was clearly timed to put me in the most peril possible.

Yes, the first hard freeze of the year blew in as I was driving from Austin to Houston to return my furniture etc to Austin. My meticulously prepared schedule was thrown askew by a dinner, a trip to save one then two stray dogs and various and sundry other random events. As a result we were loading up the trailer at night under a blanket of freezing air. It was like moving into a freezer. Except freezers generally don't spew freezing shards of water at your face. Stoic, Godlike, we perservered and got the trailer loaded and collapsed in exhaustion. In the morning we groaned our way to concsiousness and pointed our 32 foot long vehicle west bound. 40 miles into the trip we hit a very long stretch of very icy highway. Now, I don't know if any of you out in the blogosphere have driven a 2 ton truck with a 16 foot trailer in tow on a sheet of ice with hopes to remain moving straight but I don't recommend it. We had a lot of traction loss and one close call but I managed pull the truck into Austin without loss of life or property and in time to return the trailer with no late charge. I shan't be doing that again.

Either way, I am safe in Austin and all my stuff is in storage, awaiting the day I move into my apartment.

Tour

I met with my recruiter and future test with manager at Motive on Tuesday. After getting the offer letter, nda, etc out of the way I was given a nice little tour of the facility. Now, it is rather difficult to describe everything I saw but the phrase "Dotcom Wonderland" comes unbidden to mind. Free drinks, free snacks, free beer, free tae kwon do lessons, a gym, a court, a barbq pit, pool, table tennis, big screen tv, my own office, my own desktop, my own laptop, and my own dsl drop are a few of the perks I was shown.

Perks aside I grew more excited about the work as my manager described it. I'll be working on hardware verification automation framework. That means about nothing, it breaks down like this: There exists hardware (i.e. a network gateway) and industrially agreed on standards that it must adhere too. In a pervasivesque lab tests are run to verify compliance. Those tests are automated by a framework that I'll help mantain/write. At least that's what understanding I have. It seems like really interesting work since I don't have much experience with network infrastructure or Java and I'll be working heavily with both. Also I asked if I could work more hours than 20 before school starts and my manager agreed. He seems like a cool cat.

The Plan

Details are in: I start on Monday. Tommorrow I am heading for Austin in Papi's big-ass truck. When I get there I will unload all of my belongings from Seattle and McAllen into a storage unit where they will stay until I move into my new apartment. After that I am being given a tour of Motive's grounds by the recruiter; we'll also take care of whatever paperwork is necessary. My last order of business in Austin is taking the paperwork I got at Motive and using it to prove to the apartment's managers that I make enough money to live there.

After a quick night on a couch I'll snag a U-Haul trailer and head out to Houston where I will load up the remainder of my belongings, crash on another couch, and roll back into Austin to unload those belongings into the same storage unit, return the u-haul and crash on yet another 2 couches, meet my parents and roll back into Houston for my sister's much anticipated graduation. Why go back and forth? It's cheaper to rent a trailer for one night and return it to the same lot.

That brings us to Sunday. I start work that Monday, so I, again, will roll back into Austin to start work and, at some point in the near future, move into my apartment. And then I start school. At that point all the pieces of my shattered life will be again together. Mending will commence fortwith.

Never Have I Ever...

... Hit on girls while dressed as Spongebob Squarepants.

*Takes a Drink*

Civ 4++

Last night, out of boredom, I put my XML/Python skillz to use and threw together a Mormon-Themed mod for Civ 4. It's a very basic mod, I just added a civilization: The Lamenites. The two available Leaders are Moroni and Helaman and the special unit, which replaces the swordsman, is the Stripling Warrior. There are no new graphics so the "mod" is basically the Aztecs with some new names thrown in. The really difficult part was coming up with Lamenite city names besides "Zarahemla". My Mom helped and then I made some up (Mohanri-Moriamcumer City, anyone?). Technically Zarahemla was the Nephite capital, but it changed hands so often I figured it would work.

I'm still working on adding Mormonism as a religion. Though in reality the Lamenites wouldn't have called it Mormonism, favoring some reformed Egyptian phrase for "Church of Christ" or something similar.

Inspired, I am considering putting an entire Nephites/Lamenites scenario together, though that would require research into the modding interface that I don't know I am willing to do. But it would be neat.


Sidebar: Moroni is the guy with the trumpet up on Mormon temples and Christmas trees. He was a General and the symbolic last of the Lamenites. Mormon was his son.

I For One Welcome Our New Motive Overlords

Frustration is the tech industry's method of extending offers. Your recruiter will gradually offer you a job by extending decreasingly vague offers culminating in an actual offer. I find myself, now, in the "First official unoffical offer". I know I have the job, I just don't know when I start, what the pay is, what I'll be doing or whether or not I'll be immediatly transferred to the Tokyo offices. =-D

I actually missed the call, had I had my phone nearby I would know more of those minor details. But the key information has been recieved: I shall be employed for the next 6 months.

Inspiration

Everyone is familiar with those movies that involve a uniquely caring teacher taking on the previously insurmountable problems of an inner city high school, usually set to 80's music and involving some resistance from the bigoted administrators and worried parents. Through trial and tribulation alike these teachers fight for the education of their misunderstood but generally good-hearted and covertly ambitious students. Perhaps they learn a little something about themselves on the way. Classic examples include Edward James Olmos' moving Jaime Escalante in "Stand and Deliver" and Morgan Freeman's Joe Clark in the ever-touching "Lean on Me".

Now moviemakers of the genre have added something new: Absurd activities as a means of inspiring students to kick their heroine addiction, stop stealing, cease engaging in unprotected sex and convert their street gangs into roving bands of chess playing madrigal troupes. Yes, if only our politicians knew that the answer to our cities problems is as simple as the Salsa. Far be it for me to judge, though, if I rolled up on a group of cholos I would be delighted to give them some of my money for a raucous movement from "Ragtime".