Sneezing Panda

What can I say? Watch the baby, and watch Mom's reaction. Reminds me of my sneezes.

(you know who you are)

The seven odd things

Tagged by RambunctiousGrl

Here's how it's done:

a. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

b. Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.

HATE being it...

(in no particular order) things that are me about odd:

1. I have a large number of characters in my head, each with their own voice (many of them British), and they come out at what, to them, seems like the appropriate time. I have little control over this, and if surrounded by British people, I have to use all my powers of concerntration NOT to talk like them. I really can't help it, and I'm sorry.

2. I require order, yet am a complete slob. I do things in as orderly a fashion as I can. I know where everything is. If one little thing gets moved, I know it, and it drives me crazy. Dishes pile up, but I know where my socks are.

3. I think of dried fruit (most especially raisins) as smellyawfulBADnasty.

4. I prefer shoes that are very heavy - not just clunky, but heavy.

5. I work with computers and complex computing systems (both for work and for fun), yet believe that these things are destroying our lives. I think many new technologies are really cool, but are also making most of us slaves to them, rather than the other way around.

6. I can break an encyclopedia volume (or a hardwood floor) with my head. Yes, it hurts a little. I've been hit in the face with a baseball bat, I've been through at least one windshield, and I've done one of those pratfalls onto icy asphalt, and hurt my back more than my head. Never needed stitches or even a band-aid.

7. If I could wear only clothing made of leather, rubber and/or cast iron, I would.

I'm sure I could come up with weirder stuff than this, but my cow-orkers sometimes see this, and I'm afraid of spooking them. More than usual, I mean.

c. Tag 7 random people participating in nablopomo at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.

Tag others? I only know those who have tagged me. And I'm not really participating in the NaBloPoMo thing, as I am too busy writing about Modern Journalism in my Modern Journalism class...

But here they are, from the Blogroll list at NaBloPoMo (randomly picked for the cleverfoodiness of their names):

Bowl Of Cheese

Dimsumthing

EGGO Project ALREADY BEEN TAGGED.

Indecisive Peach ALREADY BEEN TAGGED.

just a little radish

Mommy Wants Vodka

Soup to nuts

d. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

Who am I?

You Are The Turkey

The center of attention, the meaning of it all. Too bad you put people to sleep!

What Part of Thanksgiving Are You?

The Furnace Maze

Now that I am warm at home.

Windows in December. Excavation pretty soon. New paths.

What does one do with dirt one doesn't want?

My cow-orkers are pushing me at my mazes again. When I was young (oh, so much younger than today) I drew mazes. My father once asked me why I was wasting my time with them (and then later apologized, which was nice of him). These were intricate, strange things with no dead ends and an infinite number of solutions. The idea was, you draw a bunch of spirals with many arms, and connect the spirals together. Each spiral center (or "valve" as I heard Greg Bright describe them once) has multiple exits. Each valve you pass through multiplies the odds against ever finding a way out. Technically, all the valves lead out. They also lead back in again.

But now there are computers. I could draw one of these things, and scan it in in phases, mapping the shortest route to the exit, but then keeping that information to myself. Proof that it's posible to finish the maze.

Perhaps I will draw one, and post it. A small one, so I don't spend an eternity doing it.

Crap and Holy Crap

Sewer goes again - thank god for Rapid Rooter. Fixed in an afternoon.

The very next morning, RG starts getting really really dizzy, which she later describes to me as a feeling of wanting to go to sleep. Also, the house smells kind of like burning. She's telling me this on the phone, so I suggest she turns off the heater now now now.

The oil company man comes in this morning and gives me a quote of $4,000!!!! for a new oil heater. So this, since I don't necessarily want to kill off prospective buyers of this, our beautiful but toxic home, seems fair.

We had a nice weekend, except for my cold. Spent in the lovely Edgefield Inn in Troutdale, OR (just outside of Portland), where I drank too much, we both ate too much, and we found a place on our way out of town called John's Marketplace, way out on Multnomah Blvd.

Every beer ever.

A large cooler of nothing but large bottles. Another large cooler of foreign brews at the appropriate temperature. Yet another large cooler of nothing but six-packs. Shelf upon shelf of excellent beers that they didn't have room for in the coolers. I am working my way through them.

Siletz beers won in the popularity contest: the Spruce Ale (made with real spruce tips, so it smells a little like a Christmas tree) was not what I was hoping for. A little weak. The Siletz Oatmeal Cream Stout (made with oats and lactose - hence the "cream") is a rich, chocolatey brew with undertones of coffee and an overall thumping in the back of the head feel. Last but not least is an organic fresh hop ale from a brewery I can't remember (I'll post it later). Yummy. Similar to the Sierra Nevada Fresh Hop Ale in body and nose. I have the Hair of the Dog Double IPA, a Deschuttes brewery Hop Trip Ale, and Siletz Chocolate Porter (made with real chocolate) left to drink. I suspect I'll be done by Friday, though I may reserve one for Saturday night, as I expect Saturday will be a day of pain and heavy lifting.

To explain: the poetry appreciation chair must be moved into storage. A 1920s antique optometrist's chair, it's really cool, but large, heavy and currently only used for hanging things off of. Then there's everyone's favorite futon and frame, which must also find pride of place in our storage unit, until we have a larger home to put them into. Then, to accommodate the fellers installing our new furnace, I need to move six sheets of drywall from the top of the stairs to somewhere they won't be in the way.

Then drinking.

Then dinner.

Then dirnking.

thndrknvdfof

Somehow Made A Film

Sans Vie is a French film I've been working on ad nauseum, except that I enjoy it, and was shown to a relatively large audience last Friday night.

I think I stopped breathing once or twice, and I know for a fact that my hands went numb while I was watching it. It wasn't so much that I wanted other people to like it, I was entirely concerned that the software used to create the whole thing had barfed somewhere and I hadn't noticed.

Just my luck it worked out OK. And people liked it, to boot, which was gratifying.

Matthew Morris, the director, was calling people up onto the stage, got the lead actors, the cinematographer, the cameraman, the key grip, and couldn't remember who else to call up. He and I had spent all summer in my basement, editing and fighting over little points of continuity and other things. RG pointed at my head, and you could see the palpable embarrassment. Which was gratifying.

The way he explained the "why a French film?" question was intriguing to me. It had to do with someone who told him how to learn guitar, and it had something to do with the learning process, i.e, if you learn from a particular person, you will end up sounding like them, so he decided that he wanted to make movies, and French movies are more like the blues, and since he learned the guitar by learning the blues, he learned to make movies by making a French movie.

Foux de fa fa

Still, a worthwhile project, if I say so myself, and a huge learning experience for me. And it's not over. He plans to finish the movie as a feature, shooting from next weekend, through February. In the meantime, I will be spending a lot of time in my basement learning the tools I've been using for the last four months, including the cool Color program Apple released.

And I kind of need to finish my basement. And the back yard. And the front porch. And the windows. And the plumbing.

Breathe....

On The Rude Again

September 16, 2007 Tracy, CA

Barnes & Noble cafe, with coffee and cheesecake from that Factory where they make Cheesecake.

Why doesn't the "Factory" thing clue me in a little? Tastes just like a factory.

Wearing an earwig for my phone has turned out to be a really good thing. I can better hear the person I'm talking to, and they can hear me. On the other hand, having Tom D saying "You've got something in your ear" over and over gets a little wearing...

The Last Depot September 11-17, 2007

A long time to be on the road. Nice people, all of them: Tom D, Robert W, Gail G and Mark S, with a Special Guest Appearance by Chris S (AKA, the Big Boss).

I arrived on the anniversary of the Big Bang in New York City. I'm not sure why but my flight was full. I was hoping a few people would stay home, but no such luck. I arrived before my teammates and began my work, unboxing what seemed like an endless parade of dumb terminals and big printers.

Fire Drill

While we all hang around outside a building that would have considerable difficulty in catching fire. Concrete, steel, metal studs and modern drywall. Oh, yeah... the Desks. Big Goddamned Desks. Crammed up against walls so that it's impossible to find the ethernet jacks.

Not without getting a shiny new hernia, anyway.

Desks made of thick, solid wood. Excellent burning profile. So I guess, don't smoke at (or under) your desk.

Back to unboxing. For all of my company's attempts to be and do Green, everything I unpack is made stable with lots and lots of Styrofoam. Enough to fill a 6' x 6' x 8' dumpster.

Once I'm done for the day, I go to the hotel to await my comrades-in-nerd. Dinner is at Chevy's, a mildly authentic Mexican chain. The beers take for-f**king-ever. The food is acceptable. Road food. What is it, exactly, that makes us choose the restaurants we do? The food almost invariably seems canned (even the rice).

The Wednesday From Hell

Everything going relatively smoothly, though I've misled myself about how many terminals I have to deploy. We thought we had world enough and time, but found ourselves at 5:15 PM (45 minutes from when we said we'd be done for the day) with issues out the kazoo. We end up working until 8:20 PM (nearly 14-1/2 hours), which put us at 9 hours between meals. And Chris S is just arriving, so we wait for her to join us in this new food adventure.

We go to a restaurant called Texas BBQ. As soon as I get past the blare of country-western music (yep - both kinds) at the door, across the floor with the used-peanut shell coating, I was presented with what looked like a butcher's case. Row after row of steaks.

Thick

Juicy

Meat

We didn't talk too much. Too tired. Chris S was subjected to Tom D and Robert W's drinking habits (endless Coors Light). I'm usually annoyed by my cow-orkers' insistence on drinking cheap, weak beer. But Gail G had something I'd only read about in horror novels - the Red Beer. Beer and tomato juice.

That's just wrong.

Thursday in the Cold

Work, work, work. I'm the only one crazy enough to work in our refrigerated buildings without a jacket. I dunno, they're bulky, they get in the way, and I tend to overheat in them, which makes me sweat, which freeeeeeezes to my body. Lots of workstations, and it all comes together pretty quickly. We eat breakfast at the International House of Carbohydrates. And again, I think about why we eat where we do on these trips. In this town, the choices are admittedly limited, but surely there must be something better...

Wound up at 6 (on time) and everyone wanted to go to the Olive Drab Garden. Italian food created by a marketing department trying make Italian food more "acceptable." Less "unusual."

You know - bland.

I begged off.

My cow-orkers are mystified by my antisocial behavior on these trips. Part of this has to do with the restaurants that seem to be popular with everyone else, but a big part of it is my own peculiar psychopathology. As I've told every therapist I've ever been to, my feelings about this are based on a joke by Groucho Marx: "I would never want to belong to a club that would have someone like me for a member."

Funny, but also sick.

It's not like I feel like I'm above these people; snobbery is only called for when you can look down on someone. And I only get really condescending when I'm drunk (on really good beer). I am in awe of people who do the kind of work we do and gain a measure of satisfaction from it. You plug the cable into the switch and the light changes from off to yellow to green. Happiness!!!

Which I do feel, but for such a fleeting moment it's not enough to base a career on. I meet people who've been working at my company for over twenty years, and are moving very slowly up the food chain. I used to think it would be easier for me to do some sort of menial job for a straight eight-hour workday, so I could free up the little grey cells for the creative stuff after work. I'm usually so wasted after that kind of day, that all I can think about is beer, food and TV.

Friday, Near the Edge of Done

Again strange food.

The work moves along smoothly, not much for us hardware folks to do. I feel a bit bad for the boss, as until the network is perfect, the hardware part is as far along as it can be.

She leaves after lunch. And I'll I can think of is "nap time."

Dinner at Texas again. More meat. And this time, bourbon - Woodford Reserve, gotta get me some.

Got it all Did

Saturday morning cleanup. Spent an hour and a half, carefully moving one cable after another to create a neater appearance and better organization in a network hub called an IDF box. I still don't know what that stands for.

Intermediate Data Fuhhhhhhh....

No food til noon.

As soon as Tom D saw the PBR tap, he knew this was the right place. We waited for a table. Waited for beer. Waited for beer. Waited for beer. Got wings. GOT BEER. Got wrong food. Everyone else got right food. Stopped waiting. GOT RIGHT FOOD. Tom D was not going to have another beer. Neither was Robert W. Robert W orders more beer for him and Tom D. I order more beer.

Everyone else leaves.

Nothing much to do do until the next morning. Play on the internet, nap, watch bad cable. Bought a bottle of Woodford Reserve, but won't open it until I get home.

Resident Men In Evil Black Blade 2

Work on Sunday lasts about four hours. Lots of cleanup, lots of packing. Back to the hotel, and on to Barnes and Noble. Which is where I write this diary up. Off to a very good, bloody movie, called 3:10 to Yuma. Terrific performances from Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Dinner at a brewpub in Manteca (Lard?) California, called Kelley's Brewery. Lightish beers and lightish Fish & Chips. Not terrible, just not much to write home about.

Monday starts at 6. Ends at 6. Including a flight home, more cleaning, and an epileptic seizure in the airport.

Just like every other day.