Secret Project HALIBUT

they come in threes.

2007-11-06T05:08:57Z

It is, of course, no more than a stupid, stupid superstition that disasters appear in threes. This didn't stop it from happening to me.

The first two events, occurring shortly after my last post in quick succession, were the loss of my job and the loss of our pet hamster, Simon. After months and months of having my pay and benefits quietly shortened, the client finally decided to cut me from their staff. Brian had no other work for me, so I'm laid off. I should have seen it coming, and I suppose I did, but I was hoping that I could slide through until I finished librarian school, which is certainly not now the case. I haven't been unemployed since I started working more than two and a half years ago. It feels like a never-ending weekend which gets ever more ominous as I do construction work for my father (the house is, again, being fixed up) and do some independent coding on a sketchy sort-of-volunteer basis which I might eventually get paid for. I've had an interview and a few calls, but mad cheese has not been forthcoming. I have savings, Carin works, and I have plans for this sort of thing--many of my expenses are less than essential--but I do miss getting books twice a month.

Simon had been off-and-on ill since the last time she got sick. She wasn't cleaning herself, she wasn't taking food, and as we were driving up to the veterinary hospital, she died in Carin's hands. My parents were kind enough to provide us with a space in their little pet graveyard out back, and we buried her that night. I didn't know her that well, but she'd gotten much friendlier after the first time she'd gotten sick (with the abscess behind her eye), and was okay with being held by people. I knew she was important to Carin, but I didn't think I'd miss her quite as much as I did.

I remarked, shortly thereafter, that I was waiting for the third shoe to drop, and drop it did. I am ill again. Having not bothered to get follow-up medical care in the four years since I was last sick, it seems that things had gotten worse--that is, they've spread throughout the whole of my large intestine. I underwent a fascinating diagnostic procedure, for which the preparatory process was the worst part (drinking two liters of polyethylene glycol with electrolytes was nearly impossible; I don't know how people ever drank four), and am now on a large pile of daily drugs, one of which has a small but nonzero change of causing terrifying psychological side effects.

I also learned why one goes under sedation on an empty stomach. When I woke up, they gave me some crackers, which I enjoyed heartily. When I got back home, I promptly threw them back up, partly through my nose. I don't remember the last time I expelled the contents of my stomach before that, but I think this will be a memorable landmark. Never before have I been so confused as to whether to blow my nose or to snort-and-spit.

Through all of this, Carin has been particularly wonderful and supportive. I expected her to be angry at me for losing my job; she wasn't. She's been understanding about us being on a budget, and she cared for me far more than she had to while I was essentially bedridden. Her already-formidable skills have been growing by great galloping leaps. I knew this, but it was nice to go to Portfolio Day with her on Saturday and watch the cranky-acting admissions guy from Cooper Union (which I mainly know of as Cooper "you have no chance of getting in" Union) say nothing but nice things about her portfolio and tell her that she had the chops to be an illustrator, though they don't offer a program for that there. She's taking flute lessons in preparation for a competition in the spring, too.

My star may be drooping, but hers is clearly ascendant right now, and it's nice to be able to bask in a little of that reflected glory. We've gone through a lot to get to where we are in regards to each other, and I'm damned proud of the two of us. We can do everything from talking about art or music or politics to cooking together to dancing like idiots to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", and it's all just plain better because she's there.

This doesn't exactly fit in with the morose tone of the rest of this post, so I'm sectioning it off. Carin and I went out for lunch yesterday with a genuine gosh-darn celebrity and two of his fascinating friend. Tim Kreider, darkly brilliant writer of The Pain -- When Will It End? (and one of the best caricaturists since Dave Sim, in my opinion), his friend and stock character Jim (also known as James the Large, who is indeed a very tall man), and Jim's wife Sarah, who's a librarian at an archival library at the other end of the state. It was a fantastic day; all of them were absolutely fascinating folks, and the day was packed with sparkling conversation. Tim even took the time to look at Carin's portfolio, which she'd keep keeping in her backpack, and drew a little toon of himself in there, which I'll scan at some point.

I don't really exaggerate when I say that I believe that the companionship of one's fellow human beings is, if not the most essential thing in life (I suppose actualizing one's potential would have to be that), definitely in the very top tier. If I have that, then things really aren't that bad.

on the animus and the anima.

2007-10-08T01:34:07Z

I read a thought-provoking bit that I'd found to Carin, and she agreed to draw her male and female aspects if I'd write a post about the idea of that duality as it applies to me. There's a rather excellent drawing of male and (especially-)female versions of her sitting on the bed. (I'm constantly impressed by the art she does, and have to keep reminding myself not to tell her to draw this and that, as she's not my art-monkey.) In any case, thus follows my half.

Were I a more well-read fellow, I would get my quotes straight from the source... but as I'm embedded in this intellectually narrow circle-jerk which we call the internet, I get it all once removed from the source. So, I'll quote Chet Hawkins here.

I read Robert Bly's book Iron John (this was when that short-lived "men's movement" thing was starting up). I had read a lot of Bly's poetry as an undergraduate, so I read this book too. A lot of it seemed pretty silly to me, but there was one passage that struck me like a hammer to the forehead. What it said was, the Woman With the Golden Hair does not exist. What Bly meant by that was, a lot of men are looking for their anima -- the term Jung gave to the feminine side of a man's personality. But what a lot of men in a patriarchal culture do not understand is that the anima is part of them, and is not to be found in another person. This is because men in a patriarchal culture are taught precisely that they don't have an anima: that there is nothing feminine about them, or if there is, that it is a bad thing and must be suppressed. Unfortunately, what this means is that a lot of guys who are a bit of a mess (and who isn't, really?) tend to project their anima onto the women they see around them.

This struck me as a particularly apt way of putting it. It also sounds like the sort of thing I'd probably heard of during my Women's Studies days, but which hadn't come up for a few years--so I get to figure it out anew.

I'm not advocating difference feminism here; pretty much the opposite. The idea isn't that there are male and female people which are fundamentally different and must work together for a society to function, but rather that the animus and anima within each person are fundamentally opposed but must create a synthesis for that individual to be healthy.

To be clear, I'm not using the words quite as Jung, or even Bly, did; when I write animus, I mean the masculine aspect of a person, male or female; when I write anima, I mean the feminine aspect of a person, male or female. (Jung apparently used the words to refer to the hidden half of a person--men had a hidden anima, women a hidden animus--but I may be getting this wrong.) And, of course, the very idea of what traits fall into each category is hopelessly mushy, dependent completely on one's culturally-based notions of masculinity and femininity. Someone raised in the Tchambuli culture, for example, would have a very different set of notions. I don't want to give the idea that I'm pretending to have access to some sort of universal truth, nor am I reifying these terms. They're just useful metaphors used to consider my own navel.

Enough ass-covering.

My animus consists of my competitive side, my enjoyment of physical exertion, of working up a good sweat and feeling strong and graceful. It's my appreciation of things gadgety and mechanical. When commenting, it's my urge to take apart a commenter with whom I disagree, or my satisfaction at constructing a good analogy. When reading, it's an appreciation of fantastic tales of magnificent scope and triumphant imagination. And it's my lust, of course.

My anima consists of my compassion and my appreciation for beauty. It's my occasional urge to do something nice for someone else, to get someone a present or to offer to cook for them. When commenting, it's my desire to keep reading until I can see where another person is coming from and add their perspective to my own. When reading, it's a desire to expand my understanding and broaden my frame of reference.

On a completely different scale, it struck me as especially powerful and beautiful that the human body, even when it seems to be in a steady state, is the product of competing engines of creation and destruction called anabolism and catabolism, respectively, each roaring along inside those tiny molecular foundries called cells. Take away half of the process, and the result is incompatible with life; it's only in balance, in synthesis, that we flourish.

the xkcd meetup.

2007-10-01T02:00:23Z

Carin and I drove up to Boston today for the xkcd meetup, a small bit of which is shown at right. We met up with Rek and her visiting friend from Portland, Kevin. I'd assumed that he was the mysterious partner she'd been glowing about, but apparently that's someone else; she hadn't used his name because she has some sort of thing about jinxing relationships by mentioning names.

Carin and I headed up pretty early in the morning; I read some more of Le Ton beau de Marot to her, getting to the bit about the Mandarin cabin. It was a fascinating read for me the first time through, but not in the way its author had intended--a bit like Schrödinger's cat. Searle has indeed made an interesting point, but (a) it's not the point he thinks he means, and (b) the point he eventually tries to draw from it amounts to a big heap of hand-waving. Between this and the reputed philosophers over at Telic Thoughts, I'm not really impressed by philosophy as a discipline.

We brought Rek a stew that I had made the previous night.

Vegan Stew
1 medium potato
1 onion
1/2 yam
2 carrots
1 cube veggie bouillon
1 cup barley
4 cups water
A bit of oil
Salt and pepper
Chop onion and fry in the bottom of a large saucepan while chopping the rest of the vegetables. Once they're smaller and translucent, put the rest of the veggies, the barley and the water into the saucepan. Bring to a slow boil and stir every fifteen minutes for the next few hours (at least two). Add water intermittently to fluff up the barley further.

The stew, after cooking, thickens until it can be cut like a cake at refrigerator temperatures. I think this has something to do with starch, but I don't really know for sure.

Before going to the meetup, we went out to lunch and had some interesting hippie food which was funny-looking (a matter of bias derived from habit, of course) but very, very delicious, while listening to an absolutely delightful performance from a fellow with an eleven-string guitar playing in the classical style.

We took the T up to Davis, and on the way, noticed that our car was filled with folks in geeky shirts--a "to be or not to be" regex (/(bb|[^b]{2})/), a Firefox logo, and plenty more. I'm not sure I can explain exactly what the geek aura consists of, but I definitely sensed it. Is it clever shirts, long hair, pale skin and a high proportion of glasses-wearers? Did my enormous red beard set it off? My webcomic-derived shirt? (An unbirthday present from Rek, as the vast majority of my shirt wardrobe consists of freebies.)

The crowd surged up the stairs of the T station and made its way over to the park where the event was being held. There were a lot of people there, and spirits were very high. It reminded me more of the Serenity preview (which was more than two years back!) than anything else--wondering where these wonderful people had been all my life. The properties that previously been seen as handicaps in my personality were suddenly valuable. For a little while, I fit in, and while I'm okay being a beautiful and unique snowflake, it's deeply important to remember that there's a whole community out there.

It's easy to see how fandom can spiral in on itself and start referring to the outgroup as mundanes or muggles. (Just more words for goyim, gaje or gaijin.) I've written about this elsewhere; see the comments there. But this all occurred to me after the fact; at the time I was busy meeting people, watching this guy on a unicycle jousting with boffer weapons, the circle of guitarists singing Tenacious D songs (I knew some of the words to "Tribute", and joined in; this is notable because I very rarely sing in public),

I feel a bit silly now for having told everyone that they can look me up by checking the photographer who illustrated Pigeon on Wikipedia, when the right article to direct them to was Rock Pigeon, which refers to the specific species of pigeon most commonly seen in cities. Darn!

The trip was not an isolated event--at least, I hope that it won't be. I spoke to an attendee who happened to be an organizer for a small SF convention which will be taking place next year. He explained to me that the things which I consider valuable and important are, to a large extent, the same things that my fellow fans consider valuable and important. This was, to put it mildly, exciting to me. It was suggested that I visit a con, as the feel of the meetup was described by more than one person as being somewhat like an SF con.

Both Carin and I are are absolutely bushwhacked at this point. I didn't realize how sedentary I was until a day strolling around a city knocked me on my ass. Utterly worth it, though.

the birthday festivities come to a close.

2007-09-16T07:16:40Z

I had the run of the apartment today, as Carin was at work. I found myself lacking cash to do the laundry, so I walked out to the supermarket to get some ATM money. The walk took a very good long while, and when I got back I felt great. Sweaty, but great. I wasn't even dragging myself around for the whole evening like I usually do after working out after a long period of sedentary life. I did, however, eat three apples in a row.

When Carin got back from work, we headed up to meet with my parents for the conclusion of birthday festivities. Carin had acquired a small topiary (a rosemary plant) for my mother, as she has mad plant-growing skills, and I brought up a picture for my father's birthday (quite belated), one for my mother's birthday (less belated), and one which Carin took some time ago for their anniversary--they're walking along the East River in Queens hand-in-hand; it's an excellent shot.

My father has acquired a habit lately, which has become worse over time, of not paying attention to people. His laptop lives in the kitchen, which isn't in and of itself a bad thing, but he doesn't seem to notice that people trying to talk to him may take higher priority than reading whatever article he's got up there. I should talk with him about it, not in front of other people. He's not nearly so bad once you get him out of the kitchen, though.

I got some little knicknacks, a very thick book of R. Crumb comics (I know pretty much nothing about him, but I do know that he's not Paul Chadwick, so I'm ahead of my father there), and the same very large coffee-table anatomy book that Carin had already gotten me. They know me; they really do. (This, of course, means that I essentially have a gift certificate for the discount rack at Borders now.)

Cheesecake and conversation were had, and the waitstaff at the buffet were kind enough to sing "Happy Birthday" in Chinese (which I couldn't even try to pronounce), for which I thanked them emphatically and repeatedly. We went on our traditional post-dinner wander around the nearby stores, where Carin acquired a copy of "Fried Green Tomatoes", which we watched this evening. She thought I wouldn't like it, but how could I not like a story about the value of friendship? (I still think it was about the value of friendship even though it was originally a lesbian romance which was de-gayed for a wider audience.)

I've enjoyed having my birthday spread out over about a week. The slower pacing has worked quite well for me.

another year.

2007-09-14T04:28:40Z

Another year, another retrospective.

In general, I hope to in any given year look back and think of how far I've come since the last; I hope to stand higher and feel wiser, to have acquired skills, qualifications and valuable experience, to be healthier, happier and measurably closer to various goals that I've set for myself.

From that perspective, I have succeeded this year. I've read at least one Big Idea Book (The Ancestor's Tale), and I'm three-fourths of the way to finishing that library science degree that I started on a lark. I have teeth which are not actively decaying for the first time since... well, I don't know, as I wasn't getting regular dental care, but almost certainly before high school. My cooking has improved greatly, as have my Java skills. I may not like my job, but I'm certainly better at it than I was a year ago.

On a more personal level, Carin and I are doing much better than we were a year prior. It's not that we don't get into situations that would have in the past led to us fighting; it's just that we're both dealing with them like mature adults. As is my birthday traditions, if I met the me of a year ago, I'd smack 'im. We made it through a rough patch when we hardly saw each other for a few months. (It's not that we were fighting or anything; it was a rough patch because working, sleeping, working, sleeping is a draining cycle when you don't get to do any of the good stuff in between.)

We've carved out some regular slices of time for ourselves, where I cook for her, or we read to each other before bed, or just flop on the couch and act silly--when I poke her nose, she wrinkles it up in the cutest way possible, and bats at my hands like a cat. It's pure distilled adorableness.

Adulthood has been a challenge in a number of ways for me; principally, I've been disappointed at the weight of obligations--by which I mean constantly being at work or preparing to go right back to work--and if I didn't have someone with whom I could pack a ton of what I refer to as the good stuff into the little time we have available to us, well, life in general would suck pretty hard.

Thanks, Carin.

This year's birthday festivities have been pretty much entirely organized by Carin. She's been fantastic in this specific context as well as the general one outlined above. Last Saturday, she rallied the troops up at the Cat's place, where along with him and Katie, we saw Eric (who had been traipsing all over Europe during the summer, lucky fellow he), Cubes and Erica, who I don't remember when I saw last. The boys watched UFC and ate nachos while the ladies went out for girly drinks (and other mysterious girly things), then we reconvened for singing and presents.

I don't think it was terribly meaningful to have a room full of people sing "Happy Birthday" to me in the past, but it certainly is now. I couldn't say exactly why it makes me warmly happy, but it does. The swag (a stack of books--they know me!) was just delicious gravy; the best present I can get from my friends is simply to get to see them.

As for today, Carin set up some things in the apartment such that when we got home, I sort of waltzed around the apartment to find the things she'd acquired over the last (I don't know how long she'd been planning it)--a bottle of delicious tawny port, a new DDR pad, a box of Jelly Bellies, dinner that had been marinating since last night, a coffee-table anatomy book that's very nearly the size of our coffee table as well as a huge book of da Vinci's paintings, and, most impressively, scads of artwork including a wall display made of nine little watercolors of cats. (I do so enjoy her cat drawings.) I think she's started to take as much joy in stashing clever things around the apartment as I do when her birthday rolls around.

Since it's still my birthday, I'm going to put off writing about the things I alluded to in the last paragraph of my previous post. Yes, they're interesting, but I'll dork about them later. (That, and having finally gotten 'round to watching "Art School Confidential" tonight.) There's time to be spent with my sweetie; I believe I'll be reading to her about Hox genes this particular evening.

nearly my birthday.

2007-09-10T06:01:47Z

It is nearly my twenty-sixth birthday. Traditionally (or as traditionally as anything can be if it's just me and I've only done it for a few years), I look back on what I've accomplished, things that have happened, changes I've made, and generally take stock of where I am in life as compared to a year previously. As it's not quite my birthday yet, I'm not going to do that right now. I am, on the other hand, going to recap the time since my last posting. Though my journal has been sorely lacking in frequency, I hope to maintain a reasonable level of completeness in coverage.

I am, as people at my age do, not enjoying my job. No, it's now reached the point where I hate my job. I'm sticking with it for the time being because it pays reasonably well, it's closely located, and I'm going to be switching careers in roughly six months in any case. Above all, I believe it is because I'm terrible at looking for work; my inertia is truly something to behold. I do like my coworkers, and I wouldn't mind working with them more... but I can't stand the customers. And I'm still sore about getting my pay chopped, as it has remained chopped. (When I took this job, there were murmurs of profit-sharing! What a joke.)

Carin talks about how the promise of a new job never pans out, how the job the managers sell you on ends up bearing little resemblance to the job you actually do. I want to think that she's wrong about that, but experience is slowly beating it into my head that she's depressingly right.

Over the last week, I've started to have a problem where I lose track of my sentence halfway through, I can't pay attention to anything except what I'm doing right now at this very moment, and I draw a blank on the simplest of things. Maybe it's finals-stress; it's subsided considerably since classes ended for this quarter. It worries me greatly when this happens; I don't know if it's happened before, or how long it will last, or what it really means. It's been centering around the work day lately, to the point where I have to tell Jay to stop explaining something to me because if he explains something new to me, what I was working on will fall right out of my head.

(I ended up looking for puzzles to prove to myself that I could do something that involves problem-solving. Not for the results--I didn't even complete it--but to do something to convince myself I wasn't going all Flowers for Algernon.)

The last few months have involved two trips, and a few outings. Looking back, I'm surprised that Carin and I got out that much, as her work schedule was opposite mine, so we were both out of the apartment most of the time, and we got to see very little of each other. She didn't get much of a summer this year, unfortunately. But we look forward, and hope that things will be arranged better. She's no longer working evening shifts at the jewelry store, but rather day shifts at a framing shop, where she can dress casually and is learning a useful trade. The change comes just in time for her to be going back to school.

I'm impressed that she's worked up the guts to ask me math questions. Not that I don't respond well to being asked math questions--I rather like it--but she's been very self-conscious about taking math classes, as she's rather rusty at it. She's perfectly good at math, but she's not happy about relearning it. Despite that, her desire to learn this stuff has trumped her pride, and that makes me very happy. (Remember, it's never a bad thing to ask; whatever the other person knows, they must have learned it somewhere in turn.)

As for trips, we took a whirlwind weekend drive to Chicago in an enormous rental van to pick up her father's old furniture. The drive out there became interesting, in the cursed sense, when the rain picked up to the point where visibility was under fifty feet, and hail started falling. I'd never actually been in a hailstorm; it was as if a hundred angry toddlers with rock hammers were banging on the roof. Carin performed admirably well, finding us a bridge to park under until the storm died down. (The under-bridge area was occupied by cars which had gotten the same clever idea first, which is why we got to listen to the hail on our roof.) A more peaceful part of the drive is seen at left.

The other trip was to Des Moines for the State Fair, where I got to meet another member of Caitlin's entourage that Carin had told me about, Chris, who was from rural Kentucky and apparently does not take after his family at all. I got to see all of Carin's family, and even though we had to head back shortly after I got there, I still had a great time. Highlights included cooking lentil burgers for the vegan guests (I don't like how they come out, which is why there's no recipe in this post, but other people seem to appreciate them) and seeing Carin's mom fly around her place of work on one of those little two-wheeled skateboard-with-handlebars scooters. The Fair has become the high point of my summer; I don't know how I got along before Carin started bringing me to it.

On a more negative note, I don't get paid for vacation. There was a change in management, the upshot of which is that my pay was cut, I get health insurance (but it's expensive as hell), I get dental insurance (which took effect just after I paid out-of-pocket for the last set of work), and all of my accrued vacation has gone up in smoke. Curse you, job situation.

My last full-time quarter at school has just drawn to a close. I previously had planned to take a full-time (three-course) schedule this fall, and then do a single course of independent study in the spring to complete the degree, but due to the vagaries of course registration, I barely managed to get registered for two. (If they hadn't added another section after registration had been under way, I'd have been down to one.)

This quarter did not include a repeat of the last one's failure to properly collaborate with my group, and I'm not embarrassed like I was before. On the other hand, my grades aren't better. (They weren't bad last quarter, so there's nothing to really complain about in any case.) I learned a few things, but I completed a course in "Information Architecture" and still couldn't say exactly what Information Architecture is. The name is like "content management"; it doesn't really mean anything. I took a networking course which encouraged me to learn more about public-key cryptosystems (short version: SSH host verification is a joke; note to self, expand on that), and also a course in human-computer interaction, which did teach me a few interesting tidbits about how "user error" is frequently indicative of bad design. Still, I'd rather be taking courses about library science. Next quarter should be better in that regard.

Earlier, I drank some ceremonial end-of-the-semester (literally quarter, but the idea dates back to when I took semesters) cheap beer this evening, which has made me quite sleepy. Hopefully I'll be able to update again before long, and I will write about a more local fair where I didn't see cows being born and took what I consider to be an awesome picture of horses, about some recent discoveries about integrated library systems, about my recently-arranged carpool into work with Doug (professional cook for twelve years, want to learn everything he knows, but don't think I like him), and about how Carin got me an early and extraordinarily awesome birthday present on Saturday. But for now, sleep, then work.

the last two months.

2007-07-23T23:14:56Z

Well, it's been about two months off from this, and I think I'll pick it back up. A few things have happened in the interim, as one might expect. I suppose the advantage of occasional, rather than constant, posting is that I can summarize the interesting parts rather than racking my brain for something interesting that happened. (I could, of course, stop to ponder what it means that I need to do such racking on an ordinary day, but I'll tap-dance around that particular abyss for right now. No benefit there.)

A summary of what I remember as the important points of the last two months follows.

I think I've come out as nonreligious to my parents. It came up when I was trying to explain that I'd do poorly in politics for a number of reasons, and one of those is that atheists have a 53% handicap, at least in national elections. Talking about this with my parents made me quite uncomfortable, though I'd have a hard time explaining exactly why. It's not like I fear their disapproval--I did get an "I was in my twenties once" from my mother--but still, I felt strongly that I'd brought up something that's not generally talked about, and that I'd made a mistake in doing so.

Carin has gotten a full-time job as a jewelry salesperson. She's very good at it--she walks on water at the workplace--but it involves shifts such that we're out of the house from around 8:30 in the morning until 10:30 PM. This is by no means entirely a bad thing; I've taken to sitting outside her workplace and catching up on schoolwork or reading, and, of course, the money is a definite plus. Also, there's the self-respect she gets from a job well done. Nevertheless, it's been an adjustment; we see even less of each other than we did when she was working part-time and I was on vacation from school.

Ah, and speaking of school, I dodged a bullet at the end of the last quarter. I was stuck on projects for two of my classes, and missed the boat on the third--my group had completed the assignment without me by the time I popped in and asked what I could do to help. It was completely my fault, and I apologized to the class. When the instructor mailed me to ask what had happened, I explained that I had arrived late to the group through no one's fault but my own. Apparently my honesty was appreciated, and I was given partial credit on the final project (which I didn't ask for, and certainly didn't expect), pulling through the quarter without any particular outward signs of narrowly-avoided doom, despite spending about a week very stressed out about it.

I took a trip to Bear Mountain with the Cats, Eric, and a girl who the Cat was trying to hook up with Eric, or vice versa. I am surprisingly out of shape in that I excreted several liters of water through my skin on the hike, but in surprisingly good shape in that I didn't slow the rest of the group down much. On the way back, Eric suggested that we climb across some slippery, moss-covered rocks across which a stream was flowing, shown at right. I have no idea why I went; in retrospect, it was one of the stupidest things I'd ever done. We made it down across the stream and back up the side of the small gorge it had dug for itself, and I suddenly realized what a bunch of idiots we all were. But, of course, it's okay to blow it off now, since no one was injured.

I got that dental filling that I had needed; everything went smoothly, and I didn't need to get anything pulled or rooted. Because I have plenty of other bad teeth, and have for years, I tried to get a follow-up appointment to get a set of dental X-rays and so forth, being motivated by a desire not to have part of any other teeth snap off while eating. I called for an appointment, and was told that the schedule opens up only on Tuesdays. I called the following Tuesday, and was told that the people who do the dental X-rays were on vacation; try back next week. I called the following Tuesday, and was told that all appointments were booked already, and that I should call in the morning. I called the following Tuesday morning, and was told that no new patients would be seen until at least next year, and then only maybe; there's a waiting list.

So I used my privilege and went to the local dental office which doesn't take sliding-scale payments and charges about three times as much for their work. (I mention this not because I'm cheap--though I am cheap--but to remind myself of how my options differ from those of someone who doesn'thave my cash flow.) It boasted comfier waiting room chairs, well-decorated facilities, and most importantly of all, a shorter wait time. I called and got an appointment set up for about two weeks in the future; about two days later, I got a call saying that there was a cancellation that day, and would I like to come in? Carin was kind enough to accompany me, as I wasn't looking forward to it. She's been remarkably calm about me getting all this dental work done; I feel a bit ashamed, seeing as how she has such fantastically good teeth. The good news is that I can get away with a bunch of fillings; I need to get them done as soon as possible, and so they gave me an appointment for a week later (on the nineteenth). I was strongly encouraged to start flossing, which is taking some getting used to but has conferred upon me the benefit of non-bleeding gums (though that might have something to do with getting my teeth cleaned), which I appreciate.

The dentist, whose manner I found curiously reassuring (there's probably a name for this particular bias) took some pictures of my teeth with a sort of endoscope-pen thingy. And boy, do they ever look bad. Apparently--and I have no recollection of this--I had some dental work done previously, as the teeth are cored out in preparation for fillings, but there's no filling in them. Looking at them, I can't believe I can actually use them to chew. Props to Carin for having a strong stomach, and for not... well, I'm not sure what she would have done, but bad teeth are a convenient shorthand for one's social caste in this country, loaded with shame on top of the practical problems of not being able to eat easily. (In the context of national healthcare, there's a bit of interesting reading at "The Moral Hazard Myth", explaining why I'd eventually be pulling out my teeth with pliers if I couldn't afford a dentist.)

I should also add that I'm not enjoying work. About two months ago, I went to the office manager and asked if I could buy a stamp from her, as she had them. She said to just take one, I did, and mailed my letter. A month later, I had another letter to send, and didn't see her there. The Steve without the mustache asked what I was doing, I told him I was mailing a letter, and that was that. Just now, I went to try to mail a letter, and discovered that the stamps were missing. Brian informed me that they're locked up, and that furthermore, Steve without the mustache had yelled, yes, yelled at him for the total of eighty-two cents in postage I had taken from the office supplies. I am now bringing pens home.

Whose brilliant math was it that determined that the morale lost by chewing people out and treating them as if they're going to run off with the entire office is worth less than eighty-two cents?

I have a large stack of comments; it's not like I stopped dropping science while I was failing to update here. I'll figure out a way to make it readable, which will be necessary, as there's more than five hundred to post.

old anatomy.

2007-05-21T06:42:44Z

Apparently you can score some decent bits of public-domain scanned artwork via Google Book Search. That fellow in the hat on the right is Bartolomeo Eustachi, or, in the Latin, Bartolomeus Eustachius, sixteenth-century founder of modern anatomy, who didn't actually discover the Eustachian tube, but did do some very important and painstaking research. If you look at the older anatomy texts, you can see that there's a great deal of artistry in them. The anatomists posed the bodies in their drawings in interesting, allegorical and occasionally horrifying positions. None of my textbooks had much in the way of art in them. The subtle allegory of the portrait went out with the introduction of the photograph. None of the science or engineering buildings were decorated with meaningful public art, like murals describing the history of that discipline; at best, there are a few pieces of bland corporate art hanging in the halls, and a heap of scrap labeled sculpture sitting on the front lawn.

I was going to get the new car registered at the DMV today, but I failed, because the car is old, and I need an emissions test. I have a temp plate for it now, which means that I have ten days--that's one Saturday--in which to do it. Who came up with the bright idea of everyone working at once? How do people who live by themselves receive packages, or register their cars, or bank (in person), or perform any task that involves meeting with people employed by the service industry? Yes, the work week makes a certain level of sense to me, but I don't understand how we're supposed to deal with it.

No comments today; I had nothin' to say.

congratulations, eric.

2007-05-21T06:22:07Z

After work, I went to the opening of the local gallery exhibiting the previous semester's schoolwork, where Carin's artwork was being prominently displayed along with that of her classmates, and where the contest-winning poster was displayed prominently near the entrance. It was a lovely set up; it's the gallery where local artists show their work, so it'll likely get some good exposure. There were all sorts of artwork there, from that mushy modern stuff I don't get and never will, to some really striking self-portraits, to a few incredibly stark drawings of prison--there's some sort of correspondence course with the nearby women's prison, and their work was at the show.

Tonight was also Eric's graduation party. Carin hadn't been to his folks' place before, and I hadn't been in a few years. When we arrived, the place was pretty much packed with Eric's entire extended family. His folks have pretty much the nicest place I've ever been; the only residence I can remember being in which was as tastefully decorated was Elizabeth's in Cleveland, when Carin and I went to Harper and Lee's wedding--which gives an idea of how often I'm in other peoples' homes, I suppose. It's like all those semi-nice restaurants with the knickknacks on little shelves were, all along, trying to look like this house. Very nice.

In between the schmoozing and munching (they had sushi! and fruit kebabs!), Eric's family put on a game of "deal or no deal" for his graduation present--though about three orders of magnitude smaller, since, y'know, they're just people. I had heard of the game, but didn't know the actual rules until they were explained. Oh, it's a case of determining the expected value of the remaining cases! At one point, it was down to one suitcase in his hand and one on the podium, one of which contained $1, the other, $650, and I'm whispering to him, "you know that the difference in marginal utility between three twenty-five and six-fifty is much smaller than the difference in marginal utility between one and three twenty-five! Take the deal!" I was counting up the expected values in my head... to impress Carin, or the Cat, or Eric? Or maybe just because math is fun.

Comments: Slashdot 1 2 3 4 | Telic Thoughts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | Pandagon

a request, dear reader.

2007-05-17T04:44:55Z

Something a little different today. I've been doing content providing for Project Gutenberg lately, and I've had a surprising lack of success in picking books (largely from Google Book Search) to download, split, OCR and pre-process. So, I'm requesting help from anyone who reads this.

Go to this starting page, or this one. Use those searches to find one or more books you think might be interesting, and leave the links to them in comments. I'd prefer if the books chosen were not heavily illustrated, though, since the scan quality on those is usually pretty bad, and I have to track down the books through ILL to scan the illustrations by hand.

Also, I dropped a big batch of comments today. I really do put considerable effort into them. I don't know why I bother going to Telic Thoughts, though--I'm really not speaking the same language as most of the people there, and it's an exercise in frustration and in talking past one another.

Comments: Pharyngula | Pandagon | The Liberal Avenger | Slashdot 1 2 | Telic Thoughts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

a two-dollar set of knives.

2007-05-15T04:13:46Z

I decided not to pop open the laptop immediately upon getting home, because that's what I always do. I flopped on the couch and did some light reading, feeling much better afterwards. On the other hand, Carin was cranky when I arrived, because she'd gotten out of class an hour and a half previously, and had emailed me to let me know. Whoops. She didn't really get mad at me, because how would I know this would be a bad night to avoid being glued to the laptop? Still, it was another in a series of not-batting-a-thousand moments.

Really--the big victory of the day was picking up a two-buck set of ten knives at the 'Mart. (The whole set was two bucks. Really.) The bar was low.

Comments: Pandagon 1 2 3 4

back to work.

2007-05-14T06:26:19Z

I was back at work this morning, and fixed the problems I'd been working on over the weekend in short order. I'd like to think that they'd been percolating as background processes, but I think that the problems I solved really were forehead-slapping obvious in nature--it's the more likely explanation. If I were really that clever, I'd have remembered not to take Steve at his word, ever, when he asks for something. Get it in writing; get it in writing.

Carin has a semester-ending gallery opening this Friday... which turns out to be the same day as Eric's graduation party. Uh-oh. I'd obligated myself to Eric first, but this is a big thing for Carin, which I definitely want to attend. Hopefully we'll be able to wrangle the logistics this weekend.

We danced this evening, for the first time in a while. I've been feeling like crap for a while now--I know the dental thing is minor as these things go, but I can't shake that decrepit feeling--and I got an 'A' on 'Warcry of Salieri' on Standard, and that makes me happy. It's one of my favorite songs; a long series of quarter notes is good for a not terribly frustrating workout. I've played it a lot, and this is the best I've ever done.

Comments: Uncommon Descent 1 2 | Feministe 1 2

dental appointment.

2007-05-11T06:54:31Z

I took the beginning of the day off, and drove to the nearest clinic providing free dentistry. Carin went with me for moral support, which I really did appreciate. The key, it seems, is getting there as soon as they open, since walk-ins tend not to be early risers. Everyone was quite nice to me; even so, I mentioned to the tech who was taking my vitals that I was pretty freaked out; she said I was hiding it remarkably well, then noticed that my blood pressure was pushing 140. (I don't have high blood pressure.) The temp filling which Carin put in is going to have to last around three weeks, until they do some digging and/or filling halfway through next month. Yes, I have to wait that long.

I'm feeling very, very off because of this; I'm so nervous about eating at this point that I'm mashing my food with my incisors at this point, taking little tiny hamster bites and chewing them most inefficiently. I feel depressed about this--I remember being depressed for no particular reason, and this is the same feeling, but it's for an actual reason. A half-month--I can deal with that. I have to deal with that.

When we got back into town, I asked to stop by the local library; I've gotten some Cordwainer Smith pages via online ILL, but they're missing pieces, and I wanted to make a request in person. It turned out that today, this very day, was the grand opening of the library; they've been trying to upgrade their facilities for ten years now, and what I had thought was the actual library turned out to only be a cramped temporary space. The place is swanky. I missed out on the free cheesecake, but I had a chance to talk to the director, as well as the genealogy and local history librarian, who happens to only be there on Mondays. (Good timing, me!)

I asked about scanning some local history photos and postcards, and she mentioned possible copyright issues. I briefly summarized The Rules (published before 1923 or unpublished by an author who died prior to 1937), and was astonished that she didn't know the duration of copyright. I suppose it might not come up with great frequency, but I work with copyright and licensing so much that it seems as much a part of common knowledge as the names of the states.

In any case, I'm going to start volunteering my time, if I can spare some, to help out there. Not only is it a really nice place, it would provide great experience in a library environment. Besides, I think my dorky skills could be of some use to them, as I absorb practical skills. I'm considering getting that book scanner ever more strongly now, even though it would make me a darned hypocrite.

While I was flitting around being a dork (Carin said it looked like I was arguing with the local history librarian, because I was gesturing so much), Carin met a very friendly girl who was playing Curious George in a production upstairs in the children's library. I said hello, but we did have to run out of there.

Brian had told me to take a personal day, but I didn't want to take off more time than was necessary; I did some web work in the afternoon so that I was only losing a half-day. Clever me, and good for Brian, in that my sick time (does this count as sick time?) isn't draining the coffers more than is necessary.

We did have Rick Day in the afternoon; we ate (though not at that Thai place which is always closed or closing, as if they don't want to see us), chatted, and watched another B5 ep. Things are starting to fall apart, in that fifth-season sort of way--nothing's going to be as epic as the fourth season; the stakes simply cannot be that high. Nevertheless, we care enough about our main characters to follow them.

It was midnight breakfast tonight, a pre-finals tradition... but we were both fading fast, and even though I'd have liked to go to it, in a practical sense, I couldn't have. When we got back to the apartment, we were crash-tired.

Comments: Pharyngula | Uncommon Descent

to the city, but not for fun.

2007-05-11T06:22:25Z

Carin and I accompanied the folks to the city on a baleful errand. Usually we go to keep my sister company, or to edify ourselves. But this time we were going to provide moral support for my sister, and to some extent Steph, at a bad time.

Details are fuzzy, not so much because I'm scrupulous about maintaining confidentiality, but because the details are none of my damned business in the first place. The male roommate that my sister had had been doing something to her roommates (though not to her); the word "assaulted" was used, but that was it. They were going to the police, and we were there to... to look supportive. It was partly for Steph's benefit, too; she's practically been disowned by her parents, and my mother's taken to her rather well.

We didn't really do much; we all sat around the front-yard table and read while waiting for them to get back from the police department; Carin and I stayed in while everyone else went out when Male Roommate came around to fetch his things. I'm told that the police will pick him up tomorrow, and presumably he'll be prevented from doing this again.

Because this was a spur-of-the-moment thing (I got a call from my father last night), I was lucky that I didn't have much homework for this week. Because we rolled back in tired as hell, we've postponed Rick Day until tomorrow evening, and now we've finished the five-hour Pride and Prejudice we'd been watching.

My thoughts on that: there's an invisible (to the characters) servant class that's standing around the periphery, and it's weird to my (modern) eyes that the characters can't see them. Everything is expressed indirectly, subtly, so much so that when Elizabeth and Darcy briefly speak honestly to each other, the effect is such that they might as well be throwing bombs. Also, I identify with Darcy, though I don't look quite as dashing in a wet shirt, and I'll be darned if that sort of knowing grin that Elizabeth had didn't remind me very strongly of Carin's wry half-grin.

No comments today; we're exhausted.

a bit of me has broken off.

2007-05-08T06:55:38Z

I broke a tooth today. I was eating lunch at the buffet with Carin, when I thought I'd gotten a bit of bone along with whatever I was chewing. I spat it out, and continued eating. A bit later, I realized that there was something wrong with my mouth--I flicked my tongue over where one of my left top molars was, and felt a jagged edge. I felt myself blanch, and panic started welling up.

Perhaps now is a good time to mention that my most recently remembered disturbing dream involved me reaching into my mouth, cracking off a chunk of my jaw--teeth, gums and all--and holding it up, pink and gray and glistening, to look at. I usually maintain good humor when injured; I managed to be polite to everyone when I separated my shoulder, or broke a toe, or any of that. But I came as close to flipping out and losing it in public as I think I ever have. I didn't scream or thrash or even snap at Carin; I was just scared out of my wits.

My father recommended that I get some temporary dental cement, which I didn't know existed. I did, and Carin installed it for me, because it's very hard to see one's own upper molar. The stuff tastes awful, but I don't care about that even a little; the jagged edge isn't cutting my tongue any more. Supposedly I can eat with the temporary filling, but food is pretty much unthinkable at this point.

To be perfectly honest, I'm terrified that I'm going to have to get the tooth removed. Carin said that only a small piece of the top broke off, nowhere near the gum line, but I'm still scared. It's not that I'm afraid it'll hurt, though I'm sure it would be unpleasant; it's the loss of bodily integrity inherent in needing a piece of myself amputated. I had no idea I would react this strongly, but there it is. I find the idea skin-crawl revolting. I guess I'll find out on Monday if I'll have to go through with it, assuming the clinic takes walk-ins.

Oh, and as I was driving in one direction or another, commenting on the day being a series of disasters, the visor fell off the car roof and landed in my lap. Perfect timing. Some day, I'll look back on that and laugh.

I have homework I haven't done yet for this week, which is par for the course when I have work and other junk to do... but I also had a bug to fix for the weekend release, which I'm not going to get to tonight, even though I told Brian I was going to, because I can't fucking concentrate.

I know I took bad care of my teeth when I was a teenager, but I've been damned scrupulous about it at least since the time I moved in to the apartment. (I don't know quite when I started; it didn't used to be a habit.) But I've been good to them, damn it, and I wasn't chewing ice or doing something stupid like that when it broke off--it just did.

Comments: Telic Thoughts

this isn't high school, and i won't treat it as such.

2007-05-08T06:48:39Z

DWIGHT: Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life.

–The Office 2x21, "Conflict Resolution"

I get bullied at the office. Nothing big--it's a thousand social cues to let me know exactly where I stand--but I'm at the bottom of the social hierarchy there. I'm fucking tired of it. If they were coworkers, I'd go to HR, but they're customers, so I can't. In lieu of this, I asked Brian (who was at the office) to step outside, where I vented like mad, saying that if my continued presence at that particular office wasn't critical to the company staying solvent, I'd have quit today. Brian tried to tell me that I'll be doing other things... but I know they want me there, and that's what pays the bills for the foreseeable future.

So, I've stopped smiling at their jokes, partly because they're not funny, but mostly because it's a sign of appeasement, and gives them the green light to continue acting like that. It's an acceptance of the behavior, and I'm going to stop accepting it. This isn't high school; we're not in a meaningless trophy-wife dominance hierarchy based on nothing, nothing, nothing at all, and I'm not going to act like we are.

Comments: Slashdot 1 2 3 | Telic Thoughts 1 2

a step forward in car purchasing.

2007-05-08T06:19:42Z

I spent the last two nights watching a bit of Pride and Prejudice (the second disc) before passing out relatively early in the evening. What the hell? I'm not even getting my schoolwork done. Work has turned into paralysis--the customer, by which I mean Steve, is making requests for changes to functionality that doesn't even exist, so I can't do something at all without doing something wrong. As a result, I'm doing as little as possible at work--there are a lot of hours accounted for with testing--and, as the comments section shows, wasting considerable time on Slashdot.

We finally brought the previous car to my father's mechanic, who explained that (a) when the tire popped, the car fell on it and cracked the subframe, (b) the 'fixed' exhaust system was installed incorrectly, (c) the catalytic converter is busted, and (d) the transmission is busted. We're looking at about two grand in repairs here, which is more than the cost of a new car. So, I fired up craigslist and went out to look at a potential replacement car, which I found sitting next to the in-construction condo complex shown here. It's dented like hell, but there's no body rust on it. I drove it around, and found a few issues with it: the trunk doesn't stay up, the passenger door only opens from the inside, and there's a squeaky belt. The asking price was sixteen hundred; I offered fourteen; they took it readily. I should have started with a lower offer... but thanks, Bear, for telling me that i can actually make offers when buying cars. (This would be much more impressive if the ad hadn't explicitly said "or best offer".) Bah; it's still a step in the right direction in my car-buying skills. I'll be back in a day or two to pay them and pick up the car.

Comments:
(4/24) Slashdot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
(4/25) Slashdot | Pandagon
(4/26) Slashdot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

... and it's found.

2007-05-06T06:38:23Z

The car, pictured at right (Carin's photo, not mine), has been found resting happily in the ghetto section of town. If I squint, I can see my apartment from there. I had picked up the rental car about an hour before we got the call from the cops saying that they had found it. It's just as well; the tire is very, very flat (as can be seen in the photo), but luckily, it's the one that we just got from Wal-Mart, and they'll be replacing it with a working tire for pretty much no money. The thieves left a discman, a toolbox and a variety of other items, but they took Carin's portfolio and my favorite henley.

It appears that they pried their way in through the sunroof; it's all chewed up on the inside, the dome light is broken, and there's a twisted piece of metal which they apparently had used to jimmy the ignition. I'm happy to have it back, make no mistake about that... but when I saw the car in its present condition, it made the theft feel very real, that some jackasses had been there, in my damned car.

The cops were exceedingly good about this; they called AAA for us, and stuck around while waiting for the tow truck, which was piloted by a heavily tattooed kid who moved surprisingly quickly. (Maybe he does repos most of the time?) While we were waiting, we spoke with the cops, who explained to me that the shoes-over-wires thing (tying a pair of shoes together and throwing them over the power lines) is a ghetto thing--it doesn't mean anything in particular; it's just something that people living in the ghetto do.

An indeterminately-aged man in sunglasses, big shorts and an A-shirt stumbled by drunkenly, and bantered with the cops, who referred to him as "Mr. Casper", which, come to think of it, may have been his actual name, or possible an ironic nickname that he acquired because he was very dark-skinned. (I don't think it was an insult, given that the cops treated it as though it was his actual name, even after he'd walked off.) Carin mentioned that he sounded friendly, but the cop told her that Mr. Casper is a bad guy, who was previously "incarcerated [...] for taking someone's life"; I think that's how he put it, which sounded weirdly poetic. He opined that a good cop knows everyone in the area he serves, which was an aspect of police work I really hadn't thought of, and which doesn't sound very glamorous, but, come to think of it, probably does more for effective police work than anything else.

I appreciate that the officer who took the statements from us was looking around for the car; I'm a bit sorry that he didn't get a collar for his troubles. I did wonder a bit if I got such good service because I'm white, but I'd have to ask someone who's not white who was in a similar situation to find that out. For my part, it made me feel good that he had time enough to look around for my car--either there's not enough serious crime in the area for him to be working on that (though I just realized that car thievery is a pretty major crime), or they're well-staffed enough that he could take the time to look around for our car. (Also, he did say that crime had dropped considerably since the casinos came in and pumped scads of cash into the local economy.)

Whatever the cause, I'm pleased with how my local government has worked, and I feel an urge to send a thank-you note of some sort. I may have problems with police sometimes (in the sense of disagreeing with their methods, policies and attitudes, not in the sense of being hassled by them), but they're the sort of things which can be solved by greater transparency and accountability. (Such as, for instance, the mass arrests at the 2004 RNC, nearly all of which resulted in no charges being filed, and which involved a tremendous abount of lying from cops.) I emphatically do not have Jeff's "fucking pigs!" thing, which, so far as I can tell, he has because he doesn't like to get ticketed for driving like a maniac.

After dropping the car off at the Mart to get the tire repaired, Carin and I continued on our previously-schedule day, in somewhat modified spirits. (I'd say higher, but the theft of the car had suddenly been made concrete for me, which isn't exactly a big upper.) I took Carin to a diner that my folks used to bring me to all the time, where they make their own ice cream (delicious!) and fry cheese (shown). Afterwards, we went out to see "Hot Fuzz". It was goddamned hilarious, and oddly relevant in that it dealt with police work in a more-than-trivial fashion... that is, before the second movie started. See, it's like two movies, both of them excellent, sandwiched into a layered confection of excellence.

Comments: Crooks and Liars

car theft.

2007-05-04T05:47:12Z

The fucking car got stolen. We brought it in last night, parked it and stumbled upstairs. We were going to go out this morning to the marina to take some pictures, but the car was mysteriously vanished from the parking lot. I didn't get upset, which surprised me; I'm angry about it, but it's not really a shouty kind of angry. I called the cops, who started by asking me if my car had just been repoed, and one showed up in the following fifteen minutes, took down the relevant information and assured me that cars do get found after being stolen.

What surprised me was that people don't just steal cars to sell them. Because we live near a casino, apparently people will steal a car in a major city and drive it here, then steal a car here and drive it back to said major with. He surmised that that's what happened, since the car's (intentionally) not a very fly ride. Also, bumper stickers and the like are good to have if your car gets stolen; the cops can keep an eye out for a distinctive-looking car better than a bland-looking one. The next car I get will be garnished with bumper stickers.

After that was done, we were left with a cancelled Rick-day, and nothing much else to do--but that's not true; we make our own fun. And so we did; I put the final touches on the week's schoolwork, and we watched the rest of the first half of Pride and Prejudice (the very long version) together. Against my expectations, I'm actually enjoying it; it takes a bit of getting used to because the characters seldom say what they mean, rather engaging in subtle games of buried expressions and furtive glances, and because occasionally I'd mentally drop a word; I suck with British accents.

Brian told me to take "a personal day"; I'd said that I didn't know how I was getting to work on Monday. He didn't have to do that; I didn't know we even got personal days, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we really don't. As bosses go, I like this one.

Thinking of this last Friday, that'll fucking well teach me to start thinking about poverty, eh?

No comments today; I was busy being pissed about my fucking car getting stolen.

homework, cats visit.

2007-05-04T05:23:20Z

As has become Saturday tradition, Carin and I stayed in and did schoolwork. The course load isn't that bad this semester, or perhaps I'm just getting used to setting aside the proper amount of time to deal with it.

We went out to see the Cats this evening. It's Chris's birthday, or was in the surrounding few days, but we don't speak of it: the Cat doesn't like having his birthday mentioned. If he's mentioned exactly why, I don't remember; I wouldn't have known it was going on if Katie hadn't mentioned it. But we hung out, watched UFC (is it just me, or are they having those every month or so?) and generally bonded until sleep threatened to sneak up on us and it was time to head back.

Comments: Pacific Views (April 20, 2007 09:51 PM)

i wish the weekend came early.

2007-05-04T05:15:18Z

I spent all... goddamn... day... debugging one single problem. I got so frustrated with it that I ended up sending the properly-built jar to the wrong server, to the wrong path; I did everything possible wrong, and it had the effect of stretching it out into a full day's work, just to fix a rather embarrassingly simple problem. I think I'd have done better if the work week had ended a bit earlier.

In the evening, Carin and I went out with my folks, plus Jeff and Tasha, to buffet. We ended up at a large, round table, and it worked out reasonably well. I still prefer being able to talk to everyone in a booth, but it was even better to have Jeff there. I took the opportunity to ask my father another one of those essay questions I have for him every so often: "why are people poor?". I'd been reading about poverty, and it had been gnawing at me. Inequality was cited, but that in and of itself explains why some people are rich, which is a related but separate problem.

Comments: Slashdot 1 2 3

that makes more sense now.

2007-05-03T06:17:03Z

Well, that cleared itself up, as these things do. Brian called me outside, and explained that, starting next month, I'm to be in the office full time, at least for the next three months. That explains a lot; I had been wondering where my father got the impression that the terms of my employment were changing, and now I know. This would have made much more sense if he'd told be before telling my father and brother, but it's done now.

We were in danger of not making payroll. Working full-time will fix that, for now at least. I can't turn down the offer. As much as I'd like to work with my father and brother on this project (and to not work with the crew I now provide desktop support for), I'd be happy. But as the offer has been made, I have to take it.

Comments: Pharyngula 1 2

a confusing series of notes.

2007-05-02T04:42:43Z

I got a confusing note from my father today, saying something about if I don't want to work on the project, he understands, along with a note saying something about Jeff having to save my ass constantly. I don't know what it was about, but I was pretty damned pissed when I talked to him. I understand that Brian saved from unemployment after I left my last job; things could have gone very, very differently for me if he hadn't been around. But how has Jeff covered for me? Does he think I'm just faffing around going back to school, in order to spite him for his own level of schooling? Does he resent me for it? Damn it, damn it.

I finally got in touch with my father, and it turns out that he was operating under the assumption that I knew I was going to be in the office full-time. (Apparently Brian had said something.) I protested that I was the last to know about this, and that Brian hadn't said anything to me. I don't know what's going on with which accounts I'll be working on at this point.

No comments today; didn't get the chance.

in which i'm not white.

2007-04-30T04:52:18Z

Work was less stressful than it was yesterday... but it was still pretty stressful. To make up for it, I had the bright idea of doing Rule 6 checks for every single Newbery Medal winner since the prize was instituted. Almost all of them were renewed, but the first and last within the period (the 1924 and 1964 winners) showed some promise. I'll see what I can do about following up with those.

When I got back, I split (from PDF), OCR'd and uploaded a book (sourced from Google Book Search), all in one single day. There was one image which Google Book Search failed to properly scan, but I can do that one by hand at some point; the book isn't particularly rare. I'm rather pleased with myself; this content-providing thing really isn't as hard as I'd thought.

Carin and I went out grocery shopping, where we picked up some discounted roses. They're not practical, but I suppose I can justify the occasional frivolity. And they do smell deliciously like the outdoors, and they'll be pretty for the next week or two hanging about the apartment.

On our way out of the supermarket, one of the clerks noticed that I had purchased a five-pound box of matzah, which is essentially crackers at fifty cents a pound now that Passover is done with. She said something to another clerk to the effect that I look Jewish. I took the time to explain that "Jewish" refers to an ethnicity, a culture and a religion, all of which may or may not overlap in a given individual. She asked me a few questions about religious practice, which I answered because I'm reasonably well-informed, not because I'm Jewish. (I know that the two big changes in Vatican II were (a) mass can be performed in the local language, and (b) we don't hate the Jews, but that doesn't make me Catholic.)

It felt unsettling to suddenly be a representative of my ethnic group--it's certainly unfamiliar. I suppose that's part of what it's like to be non-white, except it's all the damn time. I think the checkout girl was a bit ashamed that I noticed her remark about the huge brick of matzah--she repeated the "I'm not racist; I hate everyone equally" trope, and nobody says that if they're thinking straight.

I didn't feel threatened, and I can't point to anyone doing anything wrong, but the whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth.

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flooding. fuck jasper reports.

2007-04-30T04:36:36Z

The damned power went out around midnight-thirty last night. I powered down the laptop, and went to bed--without lights, there's not really anything to do at that hour, and we don't have flashlights. I magically happened to wake up not long after eight in the morning, and while I was considering what to do with the contents of the fridge, the power came back on. Despite spending roughly eight hours without power, the fridge kept its contents well-refrigerated. My frozen broccoli remained pristine, my ice cubes unmelted. I think I was pessimistic due to the last refrigerator mishap I had, when the compressor died and it filled the fridge with hot air.

Work was tiring as hell today. I discovered a problem in Jasper Reports 1.2.7: when a field extends to one line, this will allow the field to stretch. However, this works in the HTML output, not the PDF. I had the bright idea of upgrading to 1.3.2, the current release, but it fails to compile any report designs which reference static inner classes (in our case, an enum), which we need. Seriously, don't these people have unit tests? I then downgraded to 1.3.1... but that broke our build system with a faintly familiar error involving multiple inclusion of the logging jar. I ran out of ideas and threw up my hands, whereupon Jay solved the problem just before we left. He's good at things like that. But honestly, fuck Jasper Reports.

I think I'm coming down with what she had over the weekend; I'm feeling generally yecchy. She made me soup and ordered in some Chinese food, after we started our getting-home process which consisted of immediately taking off our shoes, flopping on the bed and reading the new comics that arrived today. I got Ex Machina v5, Sandman Mystery Theatre v1 and Lucifer v1-2. Clearly I'm starting some new series. (As always, my books show up on LibraryThing as I manage to add them.)

It's all floody outside; it was pretty surreal. Every so often, the mayor of a town somewhere in this state mentions that because of low rainfall, they might have to start limiting water usage. There then quickly follows a torrential downpour; it's our local version of a rain dance. I wonder if someone made water-consumption-limiting rumblings over the last week or two.

The power outage apparently included a surge which conked out my router. I couldn't connect to it over wireless; I couldn't even connect to it via a regular wired ethernet connection. The thing's lights go on, but it's toasted. I went with Carin out to the Mart to get another WRT54G, and discovered that they're charging sixty bucks a pop. I've ordered one for cheaper from eBay, and I'm going to return the Mart router as soon as the cheaper one comes in.

And so I was able to mail in that "at most two pages" paper which I finished at one page plus about three lines on page two. I'm frankly not excited by systems analysis, and I'd said absolutely everything I could have usefully said.

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