March 31, 2003

Sunburnt

As I mentioned earlier today, I am sunburned/burnt. It makes me wonder when the last time I was in this state - at the beginning of college. It took much more sun then, because I walked between my classes, ran, etc.

Now I am just outside when I am in my car or walking at night. It is very rare for me to spend the entire day outside, which is why I am original-recipe right now.

In a very obvious way this is sad to me - sunburned used to be a small penalty for a day of fun, now I am embarrassed at work and the penalty is very easy to receive since I am so rarely outside.

04:28 PM part of personal

Whaaa...

Two days ago it was hot and I got very badly sunburned; today it is in the 40s and all the blisters on my forehead are frozen. My body is like: what the fuck happened here?

10:52 AM part of personal

Pop quiz

When was the best christmas ever?

One year I spent it in the hospital. Asthmatic Bronchitis; I had it throughout childhood and had to be rushed to the hospital by my dad in the middle of the night sometimes to get adrenaline shots so that I wouldn't slip into a coma or something in my sleep.

I was young, and I remember how they called me on Christmas and told me what everybody had gotten. I am sure that they actually came by later, but I don't remember that part. I only remember talking on the phone and hearing that we had all gotten a tape recorder, and I was genuinely happy for us. We would later use it to record a variety of sounds, most of which revolved around the bathroom simply because our side of the duplex was very small and the bathroom was the centerpiece. We recorded Dad taking a shower, talking to himself in the mirror; we may have even caught that time he punched the mirror and shattered the glass on tape. He came out bleeding and feeling stupid, but still angry at his imagined boss, who he was constructing a future conversation with just moments earlier in our personal recording studio.

It must have been hard for my parents to manage; with a child in the hospital they couldn't both go either place so they split up. They also had to make sure that I got presents so that I wouldn't remember it badly; as if the shots and food weren't bad enough. They had to be apart Christmas morning, but they pulled it all off, and we were happy.

10:40 AM part of personal

March 26, 2003

Progress

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01:49 PM part of personal

Slide

This morning while waking up I had a sort of daydream/daynightmare (daymare?) in which I was in a plane which was going down. For some reason I was very calm and called my wife to tell her that I was about to die. I wanted her to know that I loved her and that it was going to be alright, and that death was not the end; that I had reached a calm point at the end.

The way that I explained this to her is that I said that my entire life I had been climbing steps up to some unknown place, and that now I was at the top and could see the playground, and that I ready to slide down and start playing.

12:21 AM part of personal

Kill them all

I made the mistake of reading a story about the POWS, which includes a woman with a broken ankle. This bothered me, and it bothered me that another prisoner was hanging limply when they tried to stand him up; he was seriously injured. It also bothered me that they asked him if he came to kill Iraqis and he had to say no; they want an excuse to kill him. I didn't realize that the situation upset me until the very end of the article in which they said:

The Coalition has taken over 2,000 POWS.

and I thought to myself: kill them all.

12:15 AM part of personal

March 25, 2003

Dear drive thru attendant,

I will use the term 'Biggie-size' to mean that I want larger fries and a larger drink. Do not correct me if I am not at McDonald's with 'Value-size', 'Super-size', 'Engorge-o-size', etc. or I will spit into the intercom receiver.

Thanks.

11:58 PM part of personal

March 20, 2003

Hate

I was in a bookstore yesterday and I saw a large group of youngish people assembling and talking in excited tones about the war. I was just out of earshot, but found myself getting madder and madder at what they were saying. It sounded to my ears like ignorant shit spit out by people who just don't get it.

I then realized that I couldn't tell from what they were saying whether or not they supported a war. I hated them either way. I got mad either way.

Any reminder of this war, the effect it will have on the world, my world, my friends, my family - makes me mad enough to hate.

10:05 PM part of personal

March 18, 2003

Quotes

"I object to doing things that computers can do."
- Olin Shivers

07:29 AM part of inspiration

March 15, 2003

Joel's test and progress

So as I move over to Atlanta and start my new job I want to take a moment and reflect on the state of the company that I am leaving in terms of software development process improvement.

I will use Joel's sloppy test.

Before

1. Do you use source control? Yes.
   
2. Can you make a build in one step? No.
   
3. Do you make daily builds? No.
   
4. Do you have a bug database? No.
   
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code? No.
   
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule? No.
   
7. Do you have a spec? No.
   
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Yes. (some)
   
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy? Yes.
   
10. Do you have testers? No.
    
11. Do new candidates write code during their interview? Yes.
    
12. Do you do hallway usability testing? Yes.
    

Score: 5

After

1. Do you use source control? Yes.
   
2. Can you make a build in one step? Yes.
   
3. Do you make daily builds? Yes.
   
4. Do you have a bug database? Yes.
   
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Yes. (when we can)
   
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Yes.
   
7. Do you have a spec? Yes.
   
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Yes. (some)
   
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy? Yes. (normally)
   
10. Do you have testers? Yes.
    
11. Do new candidates write code during their interview? Yes.
    
12. Do you do hallway usability testing? Yes.
    

Score: 12 (I figure all those some and normally answers add up to one No so we will call it 11)

It has been very interesting to see the quality of the software that we have created improve while at the same time seeing the system we are working on evolve into a stable, very usable tool. We simply don't spend time worrying about things that we shouldn't now - when a tester needs new code they use our build system to create the application from source and use our installation to update the test machines. When they find bugs they use the bug-tracking system. Developers use that system to track, prioritize, and fix bugs.

03:13 PM part of tech

Specialization

Breaking a problem down into discrete chunks that can be worked on separately is good in most cases. You can estimate each little component separate of the others, and you can assign it to one person. You of course get an integration penalty when everyone puts their little pieces together at the end, but you account for this in your schedule and so you do fine.

But another problem with everyone working on only their area is when you have a very complex system (like the one I currently work on) debugging a problem can be a nightmare. Let's say that you find a case where the system fails and you don't really know much other than who works on which pieces and how to reproduce it. So you go around to each person and describe the problem, and show them the failure. They either respond that it is not their part or they respond that it is and they go and fix it. Easy, right?

Well, normally if you have people who work on separate parts of the system they don't really understand how the overall system works so they find themselves being handed problems where their little component is being used over the network, or being called faster than they expected, or having less memory, etc. They also will claim that the problem is their part if they are humble and can waste time trying to track it down. In the other, mildly more common, case they don't think that it is their problem so they don't help.

All of these situations are bad. It is very important that everyone on a team know at least enough about the system that they can use it in a normal way as a user would, and also be able to trace problems down to their source. Otherwise you can waste a lot of time with finger-pointing and wasted effort.

03:12 PM part of tech

Dear self

I know you well and I know that you will forget this time in your life, the last year mainly, and so I wanted to write you a letter to let you know what you should remember. Read this letter later in life.

Most of all I want you to remember what it feels like to be you right now, what your view of the world is, and what your view of yourself is. Since I can't very easily do this, I will instead list a number of things that I feel are important in recreating a shell of your current self.

I know that without this list you would forget and mangle what you felt, saw, and did over the last year, so here it is in no particular order:

• Remember what it feels like to drive to work on your 30-minute commute past a small suburb in a rural area and then through the country past literal cotton fields with Mexican workers who are there when you drive to and from work, summer, and winter.
• Remember the music that you listened to - this is my best hope seriously of recreating this time - and just let your body feel your former self come out.
• Remember what it felt like to have a birthday this year and start to feel old, not because of a number, but because you are just now starting to think about the future for the first time in your life, and in the last year - the time since the last number - how much you have changed your view of yourself.
• Remember how it felt like a beginning and an ending all at the same time.
• Remember what it felt like to work with your hands for a few weeks with manual laborers who had spent their life doing it. After you quit this job and got a 'real' one doing what your degree was in, remember what it felt like to see those trucks go by or how it felt to see people out in the sun when you walked to your car. Remember also how you lost this feeling quickly.
• Remember the people that you met, and that hopefully have changed you (this is, after all, the only way to change?)
• N, who you met and talked to for 12 hours on the way back from training and then didn't wave to when you made eye contact through a window at TGI Friday's.
• Charles, who always trapped you and talked for hours about everything and was always so purely honest with people that it was refreshing and amazing - he would talk for hours about anything and given that you do this also entire days were wasted jumping from tangent to tangent until you looped back around to something technical and then started talking about work again.
• Tony, and the way he made you feel when he joked and criticized you and the way you handled it - by being nice because you had to. Remember how angry you would get at him and then how much you liked having him around sometimes when things weren't going well. Remember how you were disgusted by but recognized the way he lived his life. Don't forget how you realized that you have never gotten along with people with his personality and how you traced this back and learned something about yourself and then were able to get along with him more easily. Remember how it was anger and pity all rolled into one when it came to him, and remember how you had that dream where you beat him into the ground and then felt guilty when you woke up - but not in the dream. Remember how you thought that you were stupid because you didn't understand the way he thought and then you realized that he is like you but with no sense of beauty.
• Al, who was at times your unspoken mentor and inspired you in many ways but at the same time scared you as an example of how much work it takes to be as good as him - and remember how B and T were in contrast on many things and how that affected what you thought of them and of your future.
• Steve, who suprised you with his attitude about family and was rather clever at doing the right thing at the right time in order to do well.
• I would like you to remember how miserable you were when you first starting going to talk to somebody - how you were actually depressed but not depressed as in suicidal or anything. I would like you to remember how suicide as an idea (for other people) made sense to you finally at this time. And I want you to remember how you feel now so that you can feel the difference, but hopefully you are now so far away from that place that it will be too foreign to even imagine.
• Remember how it felt to live where you lived - in the middle of it all - and feel so lonely and at the same time like you were missing out on something.
• I want you to remember what it felt like to be at the beginning of a phase of your life when hopefully you got it all together.
• Remember how good it felt to finally discover - to reallly know - that you can change yourself.

07:14 AM part of personal

March 12, 2003

Conversation

The person in the cubicle next to me and I are talking. When I got in this morning he had sent me an email in response to the one I sent him last night after he had gone for the day. I responded to his response, and he listened to me type it out. I heard him stop what he was doing and read it, then type a few lines in response. I am now reading what he has said to me.

06:33 AM part of work

March 09, 2003

Downstream

I read somewhere that pebbles in a stream are unaware that they are altering the entire flow of the river because they can't see downstream. While this seems poetic (at least in its original form) I never really "ah-ha" got it until yesterday.

I was driving home from work and I was in the right lane with about three cars behind me. I was slowing down for a red light and noticed that the car behind me had on his right turn blinker, so I got over into the left lane.

He was then able to take a right on red at the light along with the three people behind him. I, however, sat at the light for two entire minutes. During those two minutes the three cars that I had set out into the world would have been sitting behind me at the light.

Whatever I end up doing in life, nobody really knows if I have changed the world more by moving over and letting them past than any other action that I will ever do.

Because I just know - I can't see downstream.

08:26 PM part of personal

March 08, 2003

Libraries

I grew up, in a way, in a library. We lived in a small duplex with two bedrooms for the five of us. I think that at that time our family owned maybe a full room of books, newspapers, and magazines. Both my parents are teachers, but of a different type so none of their books overlap - my mom has scores of children's books while my dad has shelves of political science and history books.

When I was a child we lived about five minutes from the local public library; it would have been about thirty seconds away if it hadn't been for the interstate that separated us. During the summer my parents would take us there almost everyday and we took part in the summer reading club, which was basically a clever way to get children to read by bribing them with coupons to Baskin Robbins and other treats such as putting their name on the wall of the library.

Well, it worked. When I was in high school I used to go to a local college library when I needed to study and I would just usually browse around before I sat down to study, which meant that I never actually did. There weren't a lot of students there and it was sort of like a tomb so some of my friends were freaked out by how lonely it was. But here's the thing - it wasn't lonely at all. I could walk up and down the aisles all day and never feel lonely because I was surrounded by the ideas, the work, the passion of thousands of people that I had never met. It was sort of like a really casual dinner party to me.

In college I worked at the main library there - a mammoth building with secret passages, freaky special collections, and a wide cast of characters. I must admit that some amazement at the simple order of libraries was lost when I was the one sorting the books, but I soon grew it back after I graduated.

There is something magical about libraries. They remind me of a story by Borges in which all the answers to every question are contained in an infinite library that is the world. If you stay and read enough in a library and just be quiet you might just doing something amazing - find yourself.

08:27 AM part of personal

Coffee Career

I spilled coffee on my jacket the other day - another milestone in a 5 year coffee-drinking career. It is a milestone because it breaks a long streak of success, allowing me to reflect on success only after failure.

This is only the second time that I have ever spilled coffee, and the first time that the drink has been one of the complex, espresso and whipped-cream type beverages as opposed to plain coffee.

When I was in college I started drinking coffee and prided myself on never spilling it anywhere but in my mouth at the designated times. This was no small feat as I was often sporting a dopey-fresh bookbag and, at very busy times, a laptop and case. This would mean that when I was standing in front of the coffee-that-has-no-taste-but-does-the-job machine I would be plotting the complex series of movements that would allow me to grab the coffee, put back on my bookbag, and pick up my laptop without spilling a drop.

I would like everyone to know at this point that the only time that plain coffee has ever been sacrificed was when a small chinese woman ran past me as I was picking up my coffee right after a difficult but highly successful laptop floor-to-shoulder transfer. She bumped into me and I thrust the coffee upwards - my mind shouting "Save the coffee, sacrifice yourself!". About a tablespoon of the coffee spilled down the arm of my gray jacket, and it smelled so good for weeks. The chinese woman, I assume, made it to class on time.

This time I spilled coffee by placing my coffee behind my laptop and then thirty minutes later pushing the laptop back (because it was time to take a sip of coffee) and, unaware of the coffee's location, causing it to fall to the floor where my gray jacket rested. So although the two spills are unrelated they both involve a gray jacket and the same laptop in a weird Twilight-Zone-but-nobody-really-cares kind of way.

When I came into work today I smelled coffee on my jacket and had a split second in which I thought that either I had not ever washed my jacket from 2 years ago or that I had achieved another milestone without being aware of it.

07:16 AM part of ever-growing evidence of a deep obsession with coffee

March 06, 2003

Marriage

Does marriage mean anything to anybody anymore?

A series of things have led me to believe that the answer is a resounding 'no':

• The damn 'Married by America' show.
• My memory of 2 other shows like it.
• A serious list of things you should do to protect your man and keep him from cheating that was on the radio this morning (number 8: Put a picture of you and some of your underwear in his suitcase on long business trips. Number 9, in my opinion, should have been: Marry a man.)

In the movie Mi Familia one of the characters would rather return to her home country and face certain death from the government than have a fake marriage to a citizen in order to stay and live. Why? Because there are some things in life that are more important to you than your life, and to some people the sacred nature of marriage is one of those things.

In other words, fuck all y'all.

06:45 AM part of personal

March 04, 2003

How to expand yourself

10:51 AM part of personal

March 03, 2003

Iron Chef

Things that I would say if I were an Iron Chef judge:

• This dish is very complex - with many levels of enjoyment - much like a 7-layer burrito from Taco Bell.
• This dish reminds me of my childhood, chasing our dog around the front yard naked with a water hose.
• Hmm.. Is this dishwater that you have used here?
• The way that you complimented the miso with some of your own sweat is quite amazing.
• I don't speak Japanese.
• I must say that this is by far the best snot-on-a-plate that I have ever tasted.
• I have an erection. It may be due to your food, and maybe not, but just wanted to pass that along.
• The way that you have combined the classic French sauce with the Redneck style of beanie weanies is quite impressive.
• Are you available for weddings?
• If you wear a bathrobe to work, do you wear a tie to sleep? I have a headache.
• There was a time in my life when I would not eat anything other than Mac and Cheese. After tasting your dish I wonder if I should return to this method.

05:46 PM part of a balanced breakfast

Checkpoint

"Hey, look: 3/3/03 3:33"

"It looks like we are halfway to pure evil."

"I think we are probably much closer than that."

03:33 AM part of stories

March 01, 2003

Wasted grey matter

I remember the state of everything when I learn something - so much so that sometimes I can't even remember the thing outside the context. For example, when I mark something in a book as being very interesting, later when I remember this little bit of knowledge I remember what coffee shop I was in, where I was in my life, what the book smelled like, what chapter, where on the page.

Sometimes when I find myself searching for something mentally I feel like I am wandering the earth, looking around for a place and time and not a fact, a tidbit.

My brain feels that the state of the world at the time of my learning is more important than what I actually learned. And maybe it's right .

10:46 AM part of personal

War

Here is how I deal with an upcoming war: I don't think about it.

Here is the other thing: It doesn't work.

06:09 AM part of personal