12-28-96 . . . .
6:45 pm Moved into my new house (again). It's totally unfurnished, except for the cardboard boxes that once protected the computers from baggage handlers. Better than eating off the floor, but still unfashionable. I don't have a bed yet, so Kris, Ed, and I are all sleeping on the floor. Yep, Kris came back down from Seattle with us to enjoy Portland's bustling beggar scene. (Why are high school kids sitting on street corners asking me for change? Typically punk- or goth-looking ones wearing leather spiked clothing from "hot topic".) And so we're all sleeping on the floor every night, eating off boxes, looking for furniture. My dad got me a desk for Christmas, but I couldn't take it back home with me, so he returned it and gave me a check. It will help me buy an Anthro Desk. I suppose I should buy a chair and a bed too. Probably within the next couple weeks.
Will I name them? No of course not, it's furniture ferchrissake.
I dunno whether it's the empty house or the relatively isolated holiday season, the cold weather or WHAT, but I've been feeling a tad teensy wee bit depressed as of late. Not a normal condition, I like to think (disgust and cynicism aren't the same thing as depression). But I don't go try to kill myself or write poetry or change my wardrobe (what would I do? wear pink?)... what do I do? Well it looks like I just get really un-productive. Haven't touched my CGI directory in a week. Haven't worked on my corp support page at all. Haven't answered my email at all.
Normally I'd just sit around at home, but there's nowhere to sit. I'm not familiar enough with this city to know where to go to think. I just gotta think on the bus and while wandering. Now I'm at work, because that's where I work (by the way, my manager caught flak for that little vacation thing.) and I feel most comfortable here.
In fact, why don't I sleep here? Lotsa floor space.
12-27-96 . . . Hello uniblab
3:45 pm Back to work (click) back to work (click) everybody (click) workworkworkwork (click) workwork.
I'm back from Seattle. Did I say I was going up to Seattle? Well, maybe not here. I sent mail to my manager telling him I would be going up to Seattle. Ed went with me, and he also sent email to my manager. Ed also called him, to make sure he knew that he would be going with me up to Seattle. Ed got okayed, so we were clear to go, right? So as we were checking out of our respective rooms at the hotels, this manager calls and asks me where I am. "About to drive to Seattle" I said, "Like I said in my email 3 days ago." Well, that surprised the heck out of him. He had read my email. He had okayed Ed to go with me. He had NOT, however, been notified that "Andrew being in Seattle" would require "Andrew NOT being in Portland". I informed him of this condition of reality, throwing his entire world into chaos, because without me there would only be one person on shift that night, UNACCEPTABLE. "Gosh" I thought, "I should have left ten minutes earlier".
Anyway, newtek Derek rescued us all from cataclysmic mismanagement by working the WHOLE DAY, because it was the heroic thing to do, and I said I'd get him a Tickle Me Elmo. Fortunately, I found one advertised in the classified section of USA today. And the guy who placed the ad said he'd deliver it in a Santa suit! Price? $20,000. Twenty Thousand dollars.
Well that was just too good, I had to go call the guy. It rang and rang and then someone just picked up the phone and just hung up, which is a good thing because I would have not been very polite. Commercialism and greed run amok. This whole Elmo thing, the cabbage patch thing... the season just makes me sick of people. A> It's shallow and greedy to buy a bunch of Elmos and then sell them for $600 each to desperate parents, B> The kids who want them have been hypnotized, brainwashed, whatever, by advertising and peer pressure (?) ("Tickle Me Elmo is totally cool. I'm gonna tell all my friends about it.") into buying CRAP. C:\> The parents who buy them at $600 are either trying to buy their childs affection or unimaginative. (or something else, maybe they want a tickle me elmo.)
Hmm. Actually you can't classify people so neatly, I'm sure there are exceptions. But who cares? those exceptions aren't what annoys me.
Happy Holidays. Bah bah bah
12-19-96 . . . You know why
11:59 pmMore and Faster!
Here we come!
White and Trashy and Incredibly Dumb! -KMFDM
I listen to a LOT of KMFDM. I don't think I've bought an album that I don't like a whole lot. Every time I go out and get one that I haven't heard I keep thinking "This might be the stupid one..." but it's always really good... well, in my opinion of course.
Last night on the way home from work, I saw a frozen pond. This is the first 'external' ice I've seen here. It got down to around 0 C last night, so things were freezing. Seasons are so interesting. Here on the mainland, there's 4 of them. Snow, Rain, Sun, and Leaves. In Hawaii there was Rain & Sun & lots of both.
Watching the weather create physical changes in the environment is neat. It gets so cold, water turns to ice. That's almost as interesting as a season where it gets so hot that things burst into flames spontaneously.
Speaking of flames (I am master of terrible segues) I also spend a lot of time watching "cthugha", an eye-candy program. In fact, I have a LOT of eye candy programs. I'll put them up here in a couple days, next time I stop by work. Ahh, uncontrolled software exchange. Don't worry, I have a few virus scanners active all the time.
Hmm. Maybe I should take the "Virus" single off of repeat. I think 20 times is enough for one day.
12-18-96 . . . I'm invisible
12:52 pm If I were in college, I'd probably be thinking of finals around now. Big scary things, finals. You can neutralize a whole semester's work by screwing those up. Understandably, students get a little uptight over them, and I notice this most when I talk to my friends who are in college. "can'talkrammingforcalcfinalseeyafterbreakstartsbye"Well, actually maybe I wouldn't be thinking about finals. I've been pretty irresponsible about school. I didn't really understand what people meant about "stress" until I started this job. In school, it was like "study hard and forsake all fun stuff or else...you'll get a different letter at the END of the YEAR on this PAPER." Oh, eek. On the job, you have more of a "work hard and forsake all fun stuff or else... you're fired and you won't have any money next week and your free Internet access goes away" situation.
If I went back to school now, I'd probably be able to apply that sort of stress-ethic to schoolwork and get better grades... but why would I want to? Shoving me into through the front doors of the halls of knowledge just doesn't work. I learn backwards. Produce the answer, analyze the problem, then figure out how I did it. Not that it's a very efficient or reliable way to learn things (see coffee lessons) but that's me...
7:52pm Doodling at work. Ahhh I shoulda gone to college. shoulda shoulda shoulda. Then again, maybe I would end up like Ed, with a massive debt on my head from tuition when his dad flaked out on paying his bills as promised.
We're looking at new equipment today at work. We get to choose our new headsets. Everyone seems to want different ones... the ones with two speakers, like headphones, the ones that hook over your ear, the ones with a foam microphone, the wireless ones...we'll probably end up getting this convertible one where you can plug different pieces in to make it into your own personalized configuration. Mr. Potato-headset.
12-17-96 . . . Black is strength
9:55 pm At work, almost at end of my last break. Got housing arrangements set. Wrote my very first check today, to ensure that I will be moving in to my new house on Sunday. It feels weird, writing checks. You write "Two Hundred dollars" on a slip of paper and hand it to someone and they seem to think that it is worth two hundred dollars. And I don't get that sensation of anxiety that I usually get when spending a lot of money at once on something intangible. (A house is tangible, but I don't have that house now..) I can see how it would be real easy to go broke writing checks. "Hey wow, I can keep writing these until I run out of paper!"Anyway, now the lame-o-tron button points at the guest-wall. As if you care, but now that makes me think I should actually complete the original lame-o-tron script... in all it's pseudo-AI glory.
Looking at other people's pages makes me think about my own. I don't have any of those copyright warnings or that © symbol... does that mean I'm leaving myself wide open to exploitation? I know it means that I don't care if you copy every one of my pages exactly and post it on another server and say that you're me. Go right ahead. Go ahead, even, and steal all my graphics. Modify my page so that it says dumb things about me. Er. Well, actually it would be nice of no one did that. Actually. I think I have legal right to this stuff the instant I have a tangible copy of it. Whaaatever. If I ever do something seriously, I'll PLASTER it with ©'s.
Got a call.
12-16-96 . . . El Guapo
1:43 am PST
Finished the guest Wall
thingie. Not that it brings me any joy. This has been quite a lousy
day. I spoke to several customers who were perfect models of the nightmare
caller from hell. Caller number one barely speaks english, never touched a
computer before. Time on phone, 54 minutes. Taught her how to use the web
(!) set up and use email, set up and use mIRC, make dial in connections.
Then she wanted to know how to use IPhone. Ergh. Caller 2 had a heavy
accent, was belligerent, and was POSITIVE there was no problem on his
side, it must be our side, since he could get mail at another service
provider. I restrained myself from pointing out that many thousand other
customers could get their mail, so it must be on his side. Spent quite a
while trying to convince him to at least LOOK at his settings. Caller 3
spoke clearly, no accent. In fact, he spoke a LOT. He would not stop. He
kept going on about how our news server was down and he kept getting
disconnected trying to download big files off Usenet, even those in
multiple parts. This was bad because: our news server DOES disconnect
people. He was rightfully angry about this (perhaps a little more than
necessary) and there was nothing I could do to fix that. Unless I had
taken it upon myself to buy $50,000 worth of hardware and stuff to bring
up a better news server. Argh! Frustration!
Anyhow, go sign that wall thing so I can see if it's working or something. Next on the list of stuff to do is ghostscript driven cgi graphics. Won't that be neat?
Oh yeah, another great thing, this morning... well, in the later morning, landlady of a prospective home called and said my application was turned down because I did not meet the selection criteria. It was probably because our former landlord doesn't like us very much and probably said so. We had never been late with the rent...our house was spotless when we left. Rats. I really wanted to live there.
In the tiny good news file, Dave finally got up here to Portland.
Hint: If you close your really thick, opaque curtains before going to sleep, you're gonna wake up wayy too late.
12-14-96. . . . 101 Tall Martians
Uh, by the way, Ed doesn't really do any of that weird ferret stuff, that was completely make believe. I was all fishies.
Anyway, I'm on a call right now. Guy wants to copy mail from Eudora to Netscape, and he's got this instruction sheet telling him how to do it. So he's reading it to me over the phone, and then I'm reading it back to him and he does what I tell him. Why does this require my help? Dunno. Maybe he has trouble reading and then doing things all by himself.
I'm home now. My RJ45 to RJ11 cord died, so I'm using the hotel phone
to convert. Meaning there's phone and wire all over my room. Anyway, been
looking around the web for a little while. I am thoroughly sick of
humanity. I'm not sure why. I just feel a kind of revulsion and
embarassment at being human and living in society. Couldn't it be better
than this? Nobody wants it, everybody hates it!
As a goddess once said: "Oh. Well, then stop."
Then she went away and left the Polyfather stranded alone with his species.
12-13-96. . . . Wow, that was a short day
Well, now I know why I seem to be losing and gaining days every so often. My computer thinks it is in Europe somewhere. Yup, the internal clock is exactly 12 hours out of sync... meaning that although the time LOOKED right on screen, the date would change right at noon... causing me a lot of confusion about what day it really is. Especially since I'm traditionally awake and using the computer at 3 am.
Weh-hell, went to a party tonight, but due to the work schedules of certain car-driving co-workers whose names start with E and end in d, we got there right as everyone was leaving... we pretty much said "Hi", met some ferrets (cute buggers. like furry snakes with legs.), and went back home. Well, it was a really fun few minutes. E-d wanted to get a ferret for a while, and now he's a ferret-maniac. Now he makes ferret noises quietly in the background while helping customers, and occasionally dresses up in a big ferret costume and runs around biting people. Also, he sporadically shrieks "I am binky! Ferret in training! Bueller! Ferret Bueller!".
Also, we're implementing SSL on spam, which is a web security feature. Read about it in Sysadmin magazine! Actually I first heard about that article from Kim and then from Ed. Everybody seems to read this magazine except for me. Hmmm.
Anyway, I see my by newly accurate clock that it is 4 am on December 14th, and not 13th like it said a second ago. Ah, whatever. That means I can write another journal entry today if I want.
Hint: Sticking your head out the window and contorting your face as you scream at the drive through order station causes the people in line behind you to become much more patient.
12-11-96. . . . Oh, the Huge Manatee.
Looks like there's a web design company already called ASD Design. Well, I guess I'll take that thing off my front page, soon. Still, kinda annoyed. Not that the name is taken... but because the pages this guy designs (I find it hard to believe there was more than one person involved in the creation of the example pages) are just... well, lets just say I hope whoever it is doesn't charge very much. Ummm... the more I look at the less I'm impressed. THIS was done professionally??!?
Well, now I don't feel so bad about my questionable page design. Everybody else's page looks really good now too. Just look around the Webring... all of those pages kick ass. ASD Web Design my butt.
12-10-96. . . . This is the end of everything I started, isn't it
Isolated. Something about being awake really late at night and having just moved away from my hometown and not have long distance phone service and being alone in a big suite kinda makes me feel a little isolated. Can't put my finger on it.
Well, no use sitting around feeling lonely. I'm going to start writing, uh, what should I call it? The guestbook program. Um... I always thought it was strange to call it a book, what with every chapter having a different author and continuity not being so hot. When I was on C-net bulletin boards they had something called the graffiti wall. Whenever you logged onto a C-net board, you were asked if you wanted to paint something on the wall... and it didn't have to be coherent or anything. <fogey>Of course, back then we were on at 1200 baud (2400 if you were a bad ass) and the web would have taken hours and hours to load. Thank goodness for change. Also, I had a Commodore 64 then. And my modem was kept operational by lots of, uh, tape (I didn't know how to solder back then).</fogey> Well enough of that muttering geezer stuff. Then it will be the guest wall. Please sign the guest wall when I put it up. I want to see what you folks think of all this blather.
Got five or six calls today from this one guy who didn't have his modem plugged into the wall. The reason
he called so much is: every time anyone started to explain how to plug it in... he'd get excited and start
doing things before he was really ready to..
"You will have to plug the modem into the wall jack in order to
connect, otherwise you'll get that no dialtone message."
Biff: "Okay!
Number 16!"(???)
"Wait! If you discon.." click.
12-09-96. . . . You can't kill it
I'm going to add a index bar to the top of these things.
Doing fine today. Made coffee at work, but forgot the "put the cup of dirt in the front" step, so I actually just made very hot water. So, I went into the cupboard and used it for hot chocolate.
Okay well I'm back from work now. I burned the hell out of the popcorn I was trying to make. Them microwaves are mighty powerful for their size. Now my whole room smells like burned popcorn.
Come on now... don't you want to ask a frequently asked question to be? Right now, there's like two.
12-08-96. . . . It's okay to laugh about it
I think I've figured out how Mister Coffee works. You dump dirt in the little white paper cup, which goes in the front, then you dump a bunch of water in the back, then Mister Coffee takes over, I hope. yup, looks like he's squirting coffee like mad.
Yup, never made coffee before. This living alone stuff is going to take some getting used to. I learn mostly through observation, so if I haven't ever seen something done... I have to look at what I've got and figure it out. What might seem blazingly obvious to others is sometimes numbingly obscure to me... at first I thought the water went in the pot and that Mister Coffee somehow shot molten coffee concentrate into it.
Also, All these <\P> tags I've been using because I saw them somewhere during that stage of learning HTML...nobody else uses them. And since everyone seems to think I automatically know what I'm doing, no one told me I'm spouting unecessary tags all over the place. Well, I've got a book now. Still gonna use P-tags though.
Hey, I think I'll put up a FAQ. Hmmm. better generate some Frequently Asked Questions first.
Also, I'm gonna have a guestbook. But not from Lpage or Purgatory. I'm gonna write my own, dammit.
Okay, time to go drink whatever it is that Mister Coffee has excreted. Back in a sec. ... couldn't find a mug, so I'm drinking out of a 500 mL Pyrex™ beaker. mmmmm.. coffee good. What's Mister Coffee's first name anyway? Joe?
12-07-96. . . . Who the hell are you?
It's a weekend and I've got a day or so off work. And all my convenient co-worker friends have gone down to Eugene. Hmm. What am I gonna do? I think I'm going to the mall to get some gloves and stuff. And I guess I'll meet people. I'm afraid I'm not incredibly great at being social. Well, here goes. Be back later.
Wow. That entry below is pretty loony. Gotta get more sleep.
12-04-96. . . . Ib I delibbidid ip, wuddidipiddit?
Hey look at me, I'm updating my page. look look look look look look look. I'm on the web. wheeee, it's all green. Wahoo green green and blaaaack. Pay attention to me, I'm the only one here. And I'm all greeeen and blacccck too. It's a lot later than I thought and gosh updating my page is soooo fun. I'm so ecstatic that I almost feel like saying this in a normal tone of voice. This is what is called, staying up too late reading your new books. What new books? The O'reilly HTML and CGI books of course. with a Koala and Rat on them, respectively. Also, pounding your head against your new CGI whiteboard script which isn't working the way it's supposed to. Instead, it's spooging all over the place. And also working on your corporate page, which is really awful and dull and only the main index is even close to finished.. Christ I should go to sleep already. But look at that mouse...it beckons me to draw another stainless steel chunk of corporate veneer to help splatter this medium into irrelevance. gosh I love the web and thats it, no more raw coffee grounds for me.
12-03-96. . . . It slices, it dices, it doesn't do anything
The new guys! I'm going to spell their names however I want to. Derek, Julia, Chris, Brandon, and Dan. I must observe them over the next week in order to be able to artfully sketch them as I have my other co workers. Also here, Steve willers and Kevin Enslow and Mike Eaton! Old Techs! Wow.
The water pipes in this building are doing some interesting stuff. If you turn the cold water on... air hisses out of the faucet. Verry disturbing. Now, apparently Some air was backing up through the toilets too. I guess at least one staffer was sitting there meditating on the mysteries of being when enough air accumulated to force it's way up through the pipes and EXPLODE up out of the bowl.
IN addition to the water being freezing cold, having your bottom exploded out of the can is an experience that few can relate to (jay?). I bet they wont return to normal bathroom functionality until well after we move offices,,,
12-01-96. . . . First day of school
Hey guess what? Today is my first day in the new office. It's only 3 am so I'm not there yet, but it's exciting. The prospect of meeting new people. Finding out what my new environment will be. Getting back on the payroll. Well, that part's not much like the first day of school.
How will my new co-workers react to me? I know most of them are my OLD co-workers (Nate, Justin, and Ed), but there a couple new ones... are they weirder than I am? Do they have sleazy web pages that I can link to? Will they know what is going on? All this and more answered in this next week.
By the way, I think something in Nate's head broke. his web page is, uh, different. Well. we're all different. In fact, I'm putting up a loony corporate-y web page in portland. No links to it now though. It consists of one HTML document and one jpg image at the moment. I don't want you looking through my gross boring (nerd) failed attempts.
And it's cold cold cold cold cold today. It Hailed! Satan!
(the gross boring nerd is a techfilk in-joke)