where was all this ennui when we were in the dead of winter? winter is almost over and spring is almost here and only now am i starting to feel kind of monotonous. there is no kind of about it though, repetitious, unchanging, tedious. it's not so bad, there is always the bright hope of the future. i now know it's tuesday and i now know i have to start planning for the weekend. all weekends have to be spectacular. there has to be an element of danger, an element of surprise, girls must be involved, vivid colors, loud music, delicious food, maybe an embarassing moment or two but definitely overshadowed by tales of triumph over extreme hardships. monday morning i am to return to work and look people in the face with the internal dialogue track in my head repeating the mantra, "oh, if you only knew what i did this weekend."
so today is tuesday. and on tuesdays i work. i make pretty code for good little boys and girls. i had a morning meeting today, which in terms of work is sort of like the highlight of my day because it's something different, and something different is always good. you'll never hear me complaining about meetings. i heart them! i feel all important and mature and smart and productive in meetings. especially if i say something and throw in a few fancy words like "generate the property lists" or "check the database." goosebumps, okay? my secret fantasy, and i'm not being sarcastic, is to come to work one day and be in one of those 8 hour meetings. that'd be a dream come true, for real.
i missed the office lunch submission deadline but i wouldn't have gotten it anyway. am i an office lunch snob? sort of. i just think if you stay in and have your food delivered, you'll miss all the adventures waiting for you in the outside world. now you ask me, okay, so, when was the last time you had a lunchtime adventure? did i mention the time i killed a pirate and stole his galleon? or how i rescued a princess from a parapet? the defense rests, your honor.
in the cold with a little drizzle slowly coating the pavement in wet dots, i ventured to kendall house of pizza, where after some careful consideration i ordered a small steak and cheese sub from joseph stalin. kind of a bad day for me, all the work i had to do pushed out my lunch to about 3pm. on top of that, in my hand was a printout of some code i was trying to analyze. this is the second time i've gone out for lunch in the bad weather clutching pieces of rainsoaked code in my hand, hoping that the fresh air of the local construction sites will spark some sort of brilliance into my usually feeble mind and i will be able to achieve a brief moment of coding clarity. that never happens, i shouldn't even try. when my order was all set, i paid and left the sub shop, walking back to the office, staring at the ground the whole way back. i wasn't thinking about anyway at that point. i turned my brain off in order to conserve energy.
so another delivery went out tonight, i was in the office until 7pm with todd. the special bond between project manager and developer. we're always the last two standing when it comes to deadlines. everyone else is far far away enjoy the rest of the evening (as well they should, nobody deserves to stay late) while we, the project manager and the developer, are slaving away trying to make a deadline. who really knows how we feel except for each other? when i look into todd's eyes and see the dark abysmal scream of deadline stress, i see it in my own eyes when i stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. but who knows post-delivery high more than us, project manager and developer? i feel so good after a delivery, i can deflect bullets with my hands.
the equipment that we ordered for the project finally arrived, a new burner and a new external hard drive. after the delivery cd's where burned and out the door, i spent some time setting everything up, taking deep whiffs of that new computer equipment aroma. the maxtor firewire hard drive has no power switch, so as soon as i connected the power and firewire cable, my mac froze for a second before i saw the maxtor drive boot up automatically on the desktop. i then hooked up the 24x burner. this would mean i'd finally be able to take home my own 8x burner after i brought it into the office over a month ago to burn cd's because there was a lack of available burners. i couldn't resist, i had to test burn something, so i grabbed my call & response cd and tried to do a cd-to-cd burn. i was kind of confused, it only allowed me to do a maximum of 16x. i checked the box a few times to make sure we really did get a 24x burner. maybe only 16x for a cd-to-cd. anyway, i hit burn, it filled the ram buffer, and no more than a few seconds of burning did the burner pop up a buffer underrun error. no! that was my cue to go home.
 80gb external maxtor firewire |
 qps 24x burner |
 qps 8x burner |
i had a stressful commute going home. first, the subway took forever to arrive, and when it did, of course it was totally packed with people. the few impossible spaces left inside, people on the platforms would quickly rush in to take. i wanted no part of that action. nothing like crowded public transportation to bring out the worst in people. i'm not immune to it either. i felt like giving everybody on the train the finger as the train left the station with me still standing on the platform because i was too polite to push some old lady into the cabin so i could make enough room for myself. when i got to harvard square it was exactly the same thing, a large crowd of people waiting for the bus to arrive. and wouldn't you know it, two women with their baby strollers. call me heartless, call me uncaring, but i hate baby strollers on the bus. first, the mothers can never the get damn thing on the bus by themselves, so somebody always has to set up and help her lift the thing into the bus. once on the bus, the stroller completely blocks up the aisle, leave pockets of empty space behind it that commuters can't easily reach. i've given this a lot of thought, and i think it wouldn't be fair for me to say that strollers should be banned from the bus. people who take public transportation do it for two reasons. there are those who do it for the convenience, it beats driving into the city. and there are those who do it because they can't afford any other mode of transportation. who am i to exert my own social-economic prejudices on others? of course these women would drive if they could afford a car! but still, you must really not care about the welfare and safety of others and your own baby (i almost used the word bastard) if you're willing to bring a stroller onto the bus during peak rush hour traffic! i've complained enough for today. time to sleep, recharge my bitch batteries.
on a happier note, i no longer see that korean woman who hates me on third street in the mornings! maybe she got a job that requires her to get to work at a different time than when i arrive at kendall square. i personally like to think that maybe she was in some sort of freak accident and is in the hospital somewhere wishing that maybe she could've been nicer to that "lovely chinese gentleman who always smiles at me but i never smile back because i hate him for no reason." poor angry korean woman! also, i have a new morning busride obsession, i call her the lip gloss girl because her lips are always super shiny in the morning from apply a heavy coat of lip gloss. i see her almost everyday, we're on the same commuting schedule. she reads, which i'm starting to think isn't such a bad thing after all. what book, i can't tell. she never smiles, which makes me even more attracted to her, so mysterious in her seriousness. stay tuned for future updates.
i bought two books from amazon.com tonight as well: "stupid white men...and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation!" by michael moore (a book i tried to find at wordsworth last night, but they were all out), and "a glorious way to die: the kamikaze mission of the battleship yamato, april 1945" by russell spurr.
my stance on bioengineered food: i am totally for it. i don't think it's dangerous, and i think the kind of people who are afraid of bioengineered food are the kind of people who don't completely understand how genetic works.