Window's Vista Marketers

You are forgiven

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/27/commentary/game_over/nintendo/

Ya Basta Por Fin!

I, again, am officially a Longhorn. Last time my application for admission to UT was accepted I literally danced with excitment; this time I look sullenly at my bank account and cry when I consider it's currently beautiful balance.

Tommorrow I register and in 1 month I begin going to campus daily, with no one to go to Hoa Hoa with. Or Madam Ma'ams, or Double Daves 2 for tuesdays, or big burrito, or, if I am feeling kitschy, super burrito.

No one to go to the comic book store with.

No one to happily discuss the fried rice cart with.

No one to take the bus with.

No one to "Hit Gregory" with.

In general all my bud's are out. I really didn't want to make new friends ever again, but lemons and terrorists and all that. New friends generally result in good times I suppose, but I have my ways and the majority of them were developed with others.

On the upside, once I leave campus I'll be amongst friends again. =-D

Quit Looking At My V'jay-jay

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Reyna. She was, and perhaps still is, one of those teachers who doesn't take any crap from students, runs a strict curriculum and is no stranger to discipline. That old biddy could squeeze blood from a turnip. Everyone know's these teachers; ultimately they are the better teachers because they teach in a process that could be likened to fire-forgery.

I, even in my youthful development, am not wont to worry. I was once called nerves of steel Lopez by a little league announcer (who happened to be my best friend's father, Mr. Najera). So when I was put under Mrs. Reyna's tutelage I did just fine. The great pressure she puts on her students didn't really phase me. I did my work and learned quite a bit, but thats about the extent of her affect on me. She once yelled at me because I was walking around barefoot and when she asked where my shoes were I informed her that I had "dismantled" my left sneaker during her tirade about listening. Memories.

Cut to nine years later. My little brother was doing very well in kindergarten and they decide to up his math instruction to a first grade teacher. The venerable Mrs. Reyna is chosen. Turns out my little bro is quite the worrier and she had him in tears every day. Not that she was being cruel, he just worries a whole bunch about pretty much everything.

He's gotten a lot better but he's still not quite there. My school disciplinary record includes scolding, name on board (with checks), time out, letters home, constant detention, spankings, in-school suspension, real suspension, being banned from a library, and close to weekly visits with the principals. Finally I was denied admittance to NHS in high school. I never did anything bad, I just let my curiosity and affinity for harmless mischief get the best of me. I also was free and easy with my "attendance". The people running my schools were not amused.

He, however, /almost/ got detention. He was vaguely threatened with a remote possibility of detention as a result of something that wasn't even remotely his fault and he flipped out. Aparently my mom told him about me and he was speechless.

It really boils down to my taking after my dad and his taking after our mom. My dad's record includes climbing out of a window during a lecture. My grandmother told me he used to get sent home early so often that she would have an afternoon snack ready. My mom never got detention. Period. And they went to Catholic school!

It makes me kind of sad. For instance, he will never grace a stage. On the other side of the coin, he is so anal retentive that he gets incredibly good grades. Where I brought home B's and C's he is getting solid A's. I just worry about him locking up during tests and interviews etc. It's already happening during his UIL stuff. So i've taken to give him the advice I gave so many people I've tutored during the years. I can't tell him to have a couple of shots of vodka..but I make do.

Let all hope he doesn't flip out.

Clerks 2

I just saw the teaser and the trailer and they made me so hot I could, with minimal effort, fuck the crack of dawn.

From what I saw, though, it seems you need to watch the entire view askew filmography to fully appreciate this movie, which i am assuming is awesome. At the very least watch clerks, dogma, and jay and silent bob since I saw direct references to those movies in the trailer.

But really, if you haven't seen everything Kevin Smith has ever put out, you need to find a weekend, come over to my place and I'll render tutelage patiently and lovingly, or harshly and regime-like, whichever I feel is necessary to fully awaken you.

I am a rabid Kevin Smith fan, and I have been ever since Clerks was my inagural film into the world of 'Cult' movies. Before tarantino, before raime, before the coen brothers, even before wes anderson I had Smith. Really, Clerks is the reason I endeavored to further my indie film knowledge.

*Glee*

Thank the Aighty Heavens

It compiles!

Ideally

I did one of those ideal weight calculator thingies. A man of my height and age would ideally weigh 240 lbs. I say's goddamn. I dunno if thats right, cause I hover round that point during the way hot summers here in Texas and I don't remember feeling ideal, just really dehydrated =-D. Oh well, it sounds like a reasonable goal, I suppose.

I thought it seemed warm

We already broke 100 degrees! I was outside today and yesterday thinking to myself "this feels like the heat of Texas I always complain about". I assumed I was being a pussy since it's only April, but today Austin Energy implemented rolling blackouts to mitigate demand outstripping generation that was based on precedence. Unfortunately Central Texas decided to break the heat record by 10+ degrees today.

I know I hate the heat and all, but walking around in stifling heat feels strangely comforting, like home. It literally wraps itself around me and brings me in =-D. Anyway, now that we broke 100, I am gonna bust out my shorts.

Dirnking for Jsues

Drunk. I just finished a round of drunk dialing, my first round ever in my life. It was a fucking blast. There were ac ouplea people that I would have calle dbut bI lost their number when I got my knew fone. Phone*. So a few of you were rpared mdy sdrunk ramblings, good for you, shame for me cause I really want to see how you are doing, and I need you reget you're number.

Anyway, I am drinking in lieu of going to mass. Drinking for Jesus, if you will. Its my way of celebarating the easters. I also made a few lemon meringue pies and they are good. I could like nothig more than to stuff your face full of delicious pie, but your're far away and I can't drie to stuff your face full of pie. or you're in seattle and I can't afford to fly to seattle in the planes. or you're in McAllen and, again, I can't drive to give oyu my pie. Also, I wouldn't want you people in McAllen to see me drunk. Maybe Papi.

As I am clearly wont to blaspheme I am given to question my spirituality. But deep introspection is way beyond me in my current state (not drunk, but being 23). I just venture to be wholly myself as much as i can . It only occasioanlly works.

And now I am gonna use my skills of a raeder to read the song of fire and ice.

Si se puede si lo quiere...

On May 1st Mexicans on both sides of the Rio Grande are supposed to Boycott American businesses. They are trying to get blah to notice blah and incite change in blah.

Do I count? Technically I come from "illegal aliens". My great grandfather came over the river on a train during the Mexican-American war. He was 9 or so. On the other hand every relative i've known has been a citizen in good standing, with wuelita being the 1 exception.

Also, if they got rid of all the illegal immigrants I wouldn't be on that big green bus so really my consumer dollars aren't included in the point they're trying to make.

We'll see how it goes.

Sidebar: I grew up around these people and they are vastly more hardworking than anyone you'll ever meet, for the most part. As such, I am vaguely pro amnesty. Also Yolanda in McAllen makes the best tamales you'll ever have and Goddamn if she is here legally.

CallBack

Holy cow I just had a crazy dream at work! (Yes, i was asleep, lets move on)

In some post-apocalyptic Austin dylan and I are seperately driving in our respective cars to an apartment we can only get to through this odd alley. Our rush was onset by the need to protect the people within the apartment from rampant looting and rioting and raping. I forget exactly who and know that some of them I didn't really know, but they were in my old High school director's apartment. We got stuck in mud and had to run the rest to of the way. Oh, and we are armed to the teeth.

So we get there and people start trying to break in and kill and so we slaughter them with a delight I can't even describe. We even had a perimeter set up in some way. I wound up taking some flak from a grenade but it wasn't bad enough to kill me, I was just bloodied up a bit. The dude who through the grenade was fat. And I chose to off him with my side arm rather than the rifle I had. I don't know why I was using a rifle, it was very awkward.

I had that thought in-dream and suddenly I had a shotgun and we magically had a sniper in the trees.

It was very violent, but kind of fun. Eventually order was restored and we went home.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar went live today. I'm not going to make use of it I can tell you now. Also I will cease to use various other services that google provides, mayhaps you'll find me using local.live.com from here on out. My reasons are not based in Google's quality or the technological advantages their competitors might offer; my reasons are much more simple.

I don't want any one company to control that much of the information I use on an everyday basis. If we keep giving google all this control they could just delete any person or historical fact at will. a la that Star Trek episode with the dome.

"Where is Al"
"I dunno, google his current location"
"GPS.Google.com says he never existed"
"Odd, I guess we made him up"

And boom, I am effectively erased from the collective memory of everyone I love. Procreation will no longer be the way to leave a legacy on the world, rather you would opt for upping your google pagerank. It's a scary thought.

Sidebar: I typed this entry on two keyboards. One for my left hand and one for my right hand. It's a ver intersting thing to watch one hand type its half of a sentence.

Modest Mouse

Austin, Tarang and now Sarah have each, in their own unique way, given me what they considered reasons to love Modest Mouse, the band. And goddamn if I don't repect each of their respective and, again, unique tastes in music. Being the hayseed hokey I am I gladly give anything a chance when someone I trust suggests it. But each attempt has fallen flat.

Allow me to paint a picture as best I can.

If you took everything any band has ever done to annoy or anger me and put it in song form, slathered vocals that barely register on our range of hearing, drowned it out with cymbal, mixed it poorly so that the lower range sounds are non existant, piped it through a low quality ham radio into my ears in such a way that I could never stop it you'd have Modest Mouse.

It's like when your alarm finds its way into your dream and you have no way to end the cacophony and you begin to slowly slip into a madness you don't think you'll be able to escape and you begin to seriously consider using the broadsword that magically appeared in your hand to slice of you're own head but you wait in hopes that your stomach will jump through your head to throttle your brain.

Am I the only one? I feel like the world is dancing to Modest Mouse and I'm outside the dance hall smoking with the Goths. This many people can't be wrong, I mean I've seen people swoon to Modest Mouse...SWOON! What aspect of normal synapses am I lacking that renders me unable to appreciate whatever joy the vast majority of my cronies find in that bassless, lackluster nebulus of white noise?

Whatever the case, I will continue to try to appreciate them on occasion. Who knows? I didn't like beer at first. Or Girls for that matter.

I've heard of this kind of thing before.

Quickest way to get your ass dumped.

Monitor

I keep close tabs on the traffic to my site; well, as close of tabs as I can. Since I don't generate the frenzied international traffic that I might prefer to my paltry few hits a day I can look at each hit one by one. I don't do it often since I can't glean much more information than visit time, system info, and geographic aproximation. But I'll take a look every now and then to see if anyone interesting is popping up.

So every now and again I was getting a hit by a spider under the auspices of www.covenanteyes.com's abbreviated dns names. The site is basically a third party web traffic monitor, sort of an elective net nanny system. For a while I was bothered by it, I couldn't concieve of any reason for them to periodcially scan my blog. I looked into the site further and actually thought it was a neat idea, assuming a lack of compulsory use.

Anyway, I found out that Dave uses the site and since he visits my blog every now and again it scans my site. Not only that, but in the past my blog has gotten him questioned because of entry titles like "Yay Boobies". That gives me warm fuzzies. The guy that covenanteyes.com reports to on Dave is a guy named John Murchinson.

Mr. Murchison, Dave is a good guy as you surely already know. We all love him.

So now I'd like to discuss the Windfucker, Woodcock, Titpecker, and Booby. The Windfucker, or the Kestral as it is now known, is a bird of prey belonging to the falcon family Falconidae. The Woodcock are a group of seven very similar wading bird species in the genus Scolopax and are of a size to be preyed on by the Windfucker. The Titpecker is similar to a Woodpecker but is gigantic in comparison. Now, on another vein, the Boobies are part of the family Sulidae, a group of seabirds closely related to gannets. Often you'll see large wet Boobies on the beach.

My Lumps

I found out recently that I do not have any health insurance. We all thought that I was under my dad's plan until I was 25 or married. My sister never tested the age limit since she got married at 20. Turns out that when I turned 22 I was booted of his plan with extreme prejudice. So I've been without a medical plan for over a year and only now found out here recently. I found out when I tried to schedule a visit to see a doctor about the weird, increasingly hardened lump in my wrist thats been there since my bicycle accident.

I dunno what exactly to do about it, there are a few available options, I just need to pick one.

Yay Me

For the 9th time in 2 years I will fly to Seattle. I hope I get to stay at that fancy Red Lion inn.

Pirate, Ninja, or Robot?

The second interview went well. It was several degrees of magnitude more difficult than the first one; by the end I had an entire hashtable implemented on paper. He asked me all the OOP and Complexity questions I have come to expect from interviewers. He also gave me what I can only call a "linux quiz" and was very fond of my answer of "who the hell knows how to use find? I'd need to man that".

I passed the linux seive with flying colors, and I feel pretty good about my technical performance, and lets face facts, I always pass the "culture fit" portion. I wasn't nearly as confident after I hung up this time as I was last time and I have yet to employ my little spiders. I do feel fairly ok about it though. It's just a waiting game now.

Class C Baby!

I went to court today, it was very educational. The whole thing was reduced to a Class C misdemeanor and I wound up with a 25$ fine and a 200$ charge for "court fees". All in all it wound up being cheaper than the fine for the offense I was actually stopped for would been; I'm not counting spending my birthday in "Detox Cell 3".

I should note that Williamson County Precinct 3 Court as presided by Judge Don Higginbothem is a crack organization. The whole day was run exceptionally smooth and, when viewed through the prism of the world's bauracracies, went extremely quickly. Kudos.

Yay

I nailed that interview to the wall! After I did my crazy inzone dance and took some more time to think about it I realized some things. I wasn't asked a technical question at all. Not even the canonical OOP question. In fact the hardest question I was given was "Whats the difference between a test plan and test case"; a question I had actually answered while discussing my past experience.

Anyone of you who know the job market are probably thinking the same thing I thought when I realized this, but I rushed to read the job description and it is definitely is not a QAE/STE type job. The majority of the work is in Perl, if my interviewer and the job description are to be believed. So I am bracing for a much more difficult interview next time around.

The interviewer ended our chat by bidding me to bone up on Perl for possible future interviews. I had explained to him that I hate Perl and hadn't used it since I learned it my freshman year. I got a laugh out of him when I quoted, if I remember correctly, Will as saying "Perl looks like ASCII sneezed". So, much to my chagrin, I am now learning Perl again to possibly code in it professionally. I felt similar distaste when I installed windows for my first stint at Microsoft and that ended with my being a staunch "VS-man" so who knows how this might end?

While I am hovering on the subject, with the exception of my ill-fated go at the Linux Technology Center here in Austin this was my only interview I've discussed Linux in depth. I got a good rise out of that.

Have a Ball...FINISH IT!

Amazon cold-called me on Thursday. I'm not entirely sure how they stumbled across my resume since I was holding off on job searching. My motive (anybody? motive...just me?) for staying my hand is a desire to "warm up" after a nice long period of academic inactivity. I was aiming to start the job hunt in earnest this summer.

The best laid plans and all that. I don't think I had a proper way of telling Katie, Amazon's recruiter, to get back to to me in a few months when I felt prepared to speak with her company. And of course she had that disarming charm that seems to be required of recruiters so I was pigeon-holed to doing anything she demanded. After some humerous and useless patter about Seattle's weather we settled on today at 5:00pm Texas time for some Amazonion to phone interview me.

So I found myself nervous. Amazon is very high up on the list of companies I want to work for and is also rumored to have difficult interviews. I asked Blake, who works there now, for any advice and he came up with some very useful gems while also stoking the flame of my excitment.

I wasn't going to tell anyone else for fear of public failure, but then I told my parents. One of my largest motivations is making my dad proud, ever since I sat the bench and he still came to our games, so if he knows I've failed, everyone else knowing is a drop in the bucket. That did add to my nervous state quite a bit.

Now that there are 5 short hours before my interview I have settled into that strange calm shielded by arrogance that I am convinced got me my previous jobs. It also happens when I approach a girl, or get on stage, or really anytime I plan to misrepresent myself. A bullshitter's high, if you will.

Some interesting points about the job:

1. I would spend 1 week in 12 "On-Call" in case the site goes down
2. I would work with the UK and Japanese teams
3. I would work in Linux....^_^
4. I would live in Seattle proper

All of those sound exciting to me. Well, the on call thing seems like it would get annoying.