Monday, March 10, 2008
Things I will not miss |11:54 PM| The loud, off key singing in Spanish
The constant grind of the concrete drills.
Back when my nose still worked, the reek of porta-lets, and the collective stench of hundreds of people who have long since stopped caring.
The answer to 90% of the technical problems being "Concrete dust"
Offices with crosswinds of up to 50 miles an hour
Random debris raining from new holes in the ceiling
(0) comments
Saturday, February 23, 2008
|3:47 AM| I keep forgetting to dig the better .css file out of the folders on the other machine for the site.
I've also had the same color scheme for about 5 years now. I think it's time to change it up a bit.
My exile is apparently going to be about a month longer or so. I'm going to buy a small fridge for the hotel room, and a hot plate I think. Some free weights wouldn't be the worst idea in the world, either. Might as well continue to buff myself up a bit.
At least the lack of distractions/happiness will help my studying.
(0) comments
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Another hot water issue |2:12 AM| The shower in this place does not make sense.
Pretty standard handle, right? If I turn it to the right, and turn it on, it's cold. Turn it to the left, and turn it on, and it's warm. So you'd think. By "turning it on" I mean, pull it up, the higher up the higher the pressure. Here's the issue, if you attempt to adjust it while you're in the shower, there's no way to predict what temperature will actually come out of the shower head. Turn it to the right, to make it colder, and it will often get hotter. Turning it the other way will usually get rid of any cold water you had and god help you if your hand or feet or genitals are in the path of that stream of water, apparently heated via the core of a captive star.
I futz with the shower controls like the joystick in Street Fighter. The fireball motion results in chaos, the uppercut may yield the colder water needed. Screwing up results in poetic cursing, I'm surprised the combinations of foul language I've spewed as my wrist is heated up to near fusion levels has not yet summoned evil spirits, or possibly ended the earth.
It's like there's a slot machine back there, a random number generator that a turn of the knob is equal to the pull of the handle. Somewhere 3 columns spin 'round, and then come up "BAR" "CHERRY" "FUCKING HOT" and I'm sent a stream of agony.
The only solution I've found so far is to turn it off completely, and choose a point along the dial, and turn it on, and possibly praying. Holy water is never dispensed.
(0) comments
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Another exciting Moment in Exile |10:52 PM| While resolving a warrant issue last week I surrendered my leatherman pocket knife to the officers guarding the court. I intended to to retrieve it, but not only did the guard station close (I showed up at the court 4 minutes before official closing time that evening, despite meteoric driving speed, and the hiring of a pedi-cab, the only way I could have gotten there more quickly would have been to skip parking and just smash my car through the front door.), but also I totally forgot about it.
Now I'm constantly having little incidents in which I need to open a computer, cut open a package, etc. I reach for the knife and...feel strangely naked.
Dinner this evening:
Brendan: I went to get the soup can and stick it onto the coffee pot's theoretical heater. I thought, I should open the can up to be safe. [Gesture of reaching toward pocket goes here]
FUCK
THE LEATHERMAN IS STILL GONE
I don't have an actual can opener.
So, I have a can of soup I cannot open.
There have been several cartoons about this sort of situation.
I have access to nearly all of the world's incorrect information, pornography, and communication at my finger tips...
Alicia: but no way to open dinner
Brendan: I suppose I could crack this case open, pull metal out of it, and forge a can opener in the sink over the heat of a battery fire
But it's mostly aluminum in here, I'm sure
Alicia: or you could y'know...go get some food
(0) comments
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
B vitamin jack |9:21 PM| There is a book, Screw-Jack, that I will always recall. I read it while waiting in a hotel in L.A., which is amusing considering the plot of the book, after The Best E3 Ever.
Dammit, for the life of me I cannot find the pictures from E3. They have to be somewhere, probably on my home machine.
In any case, I have here an energy drink I got for free from the Monster Humvee. They pulled up outside my place of work and were handing them out. Giving a bunch of construction workers massive cans of various stimulants did not strike the I/T department (me) as a great idea.
I will now consume this energy drink and see just how much I can accomplish this evening. The job list is mostly blog related, implementing the new archive menu, and finish typing up the last 3 months of entries.
It is 10:28, let us pray that cobalamin is not total bullshit.
(0) comments
Monday, December 10, 2007
Defined |8:35 PM| It occurs to me that my life is currently defined by a drive. On one side of the drive I am happy and social. On the other I must force compulsion to improve myself as a person. Pushups, studying PHP, reading, etc.
The drive is not a lesson. The drive is not important. Early on during this San Antonio situation, Naked Empire had a show at the Red Eyed Fly. I was more than happy to drive my ass down there to see them play, it was important. Chris made a point of thanking me for coming down.
Back then, it was still a struggle. Now it's just this thing I do that I dislike. It burns up my car, it eats up time, and it runs about $15-20 in gasoline.
While I'm glad that I can go back to Austin with some regularity, it somehow makes this experience feel more trivial. I didn't go on some grand adventure. I just went to a crappy town and I go back to the fun one as much as I can. If I had been sent to the Cancun site, or hell, the Phoenix construction site, that'd be something. I'd have a reason to meet new people. The city, the sights, would be new.
Here, I just go back to the hotel room or go run or try to work out. Anything like the zoo or Seaworld would be a weekend thing, and I use my weekends to go home.
I guess I should invite people down here one Saturday. I mean, I've got a hotel room with several beds, and I ain't really using them.
It's such a minor concern in the big scheme of things, it isn't something I'll be able to brag about accomplishing, and it doesn't improve me as a person, I guess that's my problem.
(0) comments
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Back in the habit |10:22 PM| It occurs to me it'll be easier to remember these particular days if I actually write them out. I can rely on chat logs and emails, but a personal narrative is also handy.
I enrolled in school again. Let's see if I can pull it off. I'm sure I'm capable. Meanwhile the activity that pays for said school (working at an occasionally dangerous construction site) is a bit wearing on the nerves.
I am doing my best to be productive and useful in the ample spare time caused by being 90 minutes from my social circles and hobbies.
I did manage to meet a nice woman, Jami, who is patient and educational. She is a research librarian by trade, and thus a font of useful facts and insight.
This project will end, one way or another, in a couple months.
I spend Friday night through Sunday early morning trying to be as social, and entertained, as possible. I look forward to Sunday morning games, Friday night parties, geo-caching Saturdays. It would be more useful to my development if I was to focus more on what I can do when removed from all other distractions. So far I've started a book club, and I've been doing a lot of push-ups, crunches while listening to "I turn my camera on" while a robot designed for educating children dances along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g-yrjh58ms
(2) comments
Saturday, October 27, 2007
School. Stay in school. |9:55 AM| As I have gone on at length on these subjects to a few people, they can probably yawn and move on from this. For the rest of you, here is my tale.
I was banished to San Antonio recently, sort of. I was sent there for work, to make sure the computers for the job site (as well as the printers and those pox-on-the-maker's houses time clocks).
A job site, meaning, construction site. I now work "in construction". Stay in school, kids!
We're near a convention center, hence the need for the hotel, so there are often streams of people wandering by the site, dressed in band uniforms or 3 piece suits, what have you. When kids, around high school age or so happen to wander by in a group, whilst I yank a time clock off of a wall, cutting my hand on the sharp aluminum, I chirp out "Stay in school, kids!" in as cheerful a fashion as I can. "Some geniuses still end up breathing fumes for a living!"
There is an inversely proportional relationship between the amount of safety gear you wear and the relative prestige of your job. Since I am compelled to wear a hard hat, safety glasses, sometimes ear protection, and steel toed boots, that puts my job prestige rather far down the list. This is in comparison to say, an executive, whose main protective gear would be a particularly sturdy tie pin.
There are exceptions to this rule, one being "Astronaut" which is still quite prestigious, though not as much as the "Right Stuff" days.
However, full immersion sewer diver has to be mentioned. Christ. I bet the money is great, though.
There are spike pits here. Fireballs, moving platforms, huge pipes. It's a lot like a Super Mario World level. I'll let you guys know if any mushrooms start sliding around.
No flowers, fire or otherwise, grow in this ruined earth.
(0) comments
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Beetle |10:17 PM| This guy following me around, beetle-ish brow furrowed, with a piece of paper limp in his hand like a flaccid, useless dick is beginning to get on my nerves.
That's not exactly tough, since I'm walking around a construction site with a computer on my shoulder, a bunch of broken crap that needs to be fixed, and apparently a massive, possibly cancer-inducing magnetic field to be defeated.
The magnetic field is destroying the monitor I brought down from Austin to install, and I can almost feel my the iron being pulled out of my blood cells. It is present only at the middle of this desk. Move the monitor 2 feet in either direction and the red/green distortion vanishes. What the hell is this desk sitting on? An atomic reactor? A tiny black hole?
"So who, who fills this out? I don't understand." He says, weakly. I can't stand him.
Granted, I'm not exactly being captain confidently-in-charge. I'm still at the stage of employment where I'm not exactly sure of the organizational structure of this place, and I'm not taking a firm stance on who, exactly, his manager is, as I don't want to be caught in a mistake, and besides, shouldn't he know his own boss?
I've been trying to express that I just need him to go take it to whoever the hell his manager is, and have them approve the purchase of a nicer monitor than the one he has now. I myself have a purchasing authority of exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents. Once again I ask who he reports to, and he lists several names. Christ, who is his manager? That's all I care about. Correction: all that I'm supposed to care about. He walks off towards a managers office, and finds it closed, locked, empty. I can see him mill at this roadblock for a moment, turning slowly, like a dog whose water dish has suddenly vanished. Fuckshit McHelpless is once again incapable of acting on his own.
I do not want to be here. I want to go back to Austin, see the college counselor, and stop breathing in this guy's B.O. I can smell it ruining my clothes, despite the alkali dust being kicked up by all the concrete.
The reason I am posting this, really, is as an example of difference in personal initiative. The computer I'm installing is for a foreman (Let's call him Jack) was originally for someone else (Let's call him Joseph), who nobody seemed to know anymore or be able to find, which means that he had been fired. Jack came up to me and asked if he could have a computer. I told him "Have your manager fill out this form, and heck, I'll give you this one". Jack went, found his manager missing, went and found another manager, had them sign off on it, and came back to find me. I installed his computer in a matter of minutes. This is when I found the rip in the space/time continuum that seemed to exist only on the desk of Jack. We stole another man's desk who was on lunch. Let the lazy, food-eater contend with the ball crushing force of Tesla's ghost.
Fuckshit, on the other hand, had made one or two impotent efforts to figure out who in the hell his own boss is, and has once again returned to me.
(0) comments
Things I will not miss |11:54 PM| The loud, off key singing in Spanish
The constant grind of the concrete drills.
Back when my nose still worked, the reek of porta-lets, and the collective stench of hundreds of people who have long since stopped caring.
The answer to 90% of the technical problems being "Concrete dust"
Offices with crosswinds of up to 50 miles an hour
Random debris raining from new holes in the ceiling
Labels: exiled
(0) comments
Saturday, February 23, 2008
|3:47 AM| I keep forgetting to dig the better .css file out of the folders on the other machine for the site.
I've also had the same color scheme for about 5 years now. I think it's time to change it up a bit.
My exile is apparently going to be about a month longer or so. I'm going to buy a small fridge for the hotel room, and a hot plate I think. Some free weights wouldn't be the worst idea in the world, either. Might as well continue to buff myself up a bit.
At least the lack of distractions/happiness will help my studying.
Labels: exiled, Site Status
(0) comments
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Another hot water issue |2:12 AM| The shower in this place does not make sense.
Pretty standard handle, right? If I turn it to the right, and turn it on, it's cold. Turn it to the left, and turn it on, and it's warm. So you'd think. By "turning it on" I mean, pull it up, the higher up the higher the pressure. Here's the issue, if you attempt to adjust it while you're in the shower, there's no way to predict what temperature will actually come out of the shower head. Turn it to the right, to make it colder, and it will often get hotter. Turning it the other way will usually get rid of any cold water you had and god help you if your hand or feet or genitals are in the path of that stream of water, apparently heated via the core of a captive star.
I futz with the shower controls like the joystick in Street Fighter. The fireball motion results in chaos, the uppercut may yield the colder water needed. Screwing up results in poetic cursing, I'm surprised the combinations of foul language I've spewed as my wrist is heated up to near fusion levels has not yet summoned evil spirits, or possibly ended the earth.
It's like there's a slot machine back there, a random number generator that a turn of the knob is equal to the pull of the handle. Somewhere 3 columns spin 'round, and then come up "BAR" "CHERRY" "FUCKING HOT" and I'm sent a stream of agony.
The only solution I've found so far is to turn it off completely, and choose a point along the dial, and turn it on, and possibly praying. Holy water is never dispensed.
Labels: exiled
(0) comments
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Another exciting Moment in Exile |10:52 PM| While resolving a warrant issue last week I surrendered my leatherman pocket knife to the officers guarding the court. I intended to to retrieve it, but not only did the guard station close (I showed up at the court 4 minutes before official closing time that evening, despite meteoric driving speed, and the hiring of a pedi-cab, the only way I could have gotten there more quickly would have been to skip parking and just smash my car through the front door.), but also I totally forgot about it.
Now I'm constantly having little incidents in which I need to open a computer, cut open a package, etc. I reach for the knife and...feel strangely naked.
Dinner this evening:
Brendan: I went to get the soup can and stick it onto the coffee pot's theoretical heater. I thought, I should open the can up to be safe. [Gesture of reaching toward pocket goes here]
FUCK
THE LEATHERMAN IS STILL GONE
I don't have an actual can opener.
So, I have a can of soup I cannot open.
There have been several cartoons about this sort of situation.
I have access to nearly all of the world's incorrect information, pornography, and communication at my finger tips...
Alicia: but no way to open dinner
Brendan: I suppose I could crack this case open, pull metal out of it, and forge a can opener in the sink over the heat of a battery fire
But it's mostly aluminum in here, I'm sure
Alicia: or you could y'know...go get some food
Labels: exiled, goddamn chatlogs
(0) comments
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
B vitamin jack |9:21 PM| There is a book, Screw-Jack, that I will always recall. I read it while waiting in a hotel in L.A., which is amusing considering the plot of the book, after The Best E3 Ever.
Dammit, for the life of me I cannot find the pictures from E3. They have to be somewhere, probably on my home machine.
In any case, I have here an energy drink I got for free from the Monster Humvee. They pulled up outside my place of work and were handing them out. Giving a bunch of construction workers massive cans of various stimulants did not strike the I/T department (me) as a great idea.
I will now consume this energy drink and see just how much I can accomplish this evening. The job list is mostly blog related, implementing the new archive menu, and finish typing up the last 3 months of entries.
It is 10:28, let us pray that cobalamin is not total bullshit.
Labels: exiled
(0) comments
Monday, December 10, 2007
Defined |8:35 PM| It occurs to me that my life is currently defined by a drive. On one side of the drive I am happy and social. On the other I must force compulsion to improve myself as a person. Pushups, studying PHP, reading, etc.
The drive is not a lesson. The drive is not important. Early on during this San Antonio situation, Naked Empire had a show at the Red Eyed Fly. I was more than happy to drive my ass down there to see them play, it was important. Chris made a point of thanking me for coming down.
Back then, it was still a struggle. Now it's just this thing I do that I dislike. It burns up my car, it eats up time, and it runs about $15-20 in gasoline.
While I'm glad that I can go back to Austin with some regularity, it somehow makes this experience feel more trivial. I didn't go on some grand adventure. I just went to a crappy town and I go back to the fun one as much as I can. If I had been sent to the Cancun site, or hell, the Phoenix construction site, that'd be something. I'd have a reason to meet new people. The city, the sights, would be new.
Here, I just go back to the hotel room or go run or try to work out. Anything like the zoo or Seaworld would be a weekend thing, and I use my weekends to go home.
I guess I should invite people down here one Saturday. I mean, I've got a hotel room with several beds, and I ain't really using them.
It's such a minor concern in the big scheme of things, it isn't something I'll be able to brag about accomplishing, and it doesn't improve me as a person, I guess that's my problem.
Labels: exiled
(0) comments
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Back in the habit |10:22 PM| It occurs to me it'll be easier to remember these particular days if I actually write them out. I can rely on chat logs and emails, but a personal narrative is also handy.
I enrolled in school again. Let's see if I can pull it off. I'm sure I'm capable. Meanwhile the activity that pays for said school (working at an occasionally dangerous construction site) is a bit wearing on the nerves.
I am doing my best to be productive and useful in the ample spare time caused by being 90 minutes from my social circles and hobbies.
I did manage to meet a nice woman, Jami, who is patient and educational. She is a research librarian by trade, and thus a font of useful facts and insight.
This project will end, one way or another, in a couple months.
I spend Friday night through Sunday early morning trying to be as social, and entertained, as possible. I look forward to Sunday morning games, Friday night parties, geo-caching Saturdays. It would be more useful to my development if I was to focus more on what I can do when removed from all other distractions. So far I've started a book club, and I've been doing a lot of push-ups, crunches while listening to "I turn my camera on" while a robot designed for educating children dances along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g-yrjh58ms
(2) comments
Saturday, October 27, 2007
School. Stay in school. |9:55 AM| As I have gone on at length on these subjects to a few people, they can probably yawn and move on from this. For the rest of you, here is my tale.
I was banished to San Antonio recently, sort of. I was sent there for work, to make sure the computers for the job site (as well as the printers and those pox-on-the-maker's houses time clocks).
A job site, meaning, construction site. I now work "in construction". Stay in school, kids!
We're near a convention center, hence the need for the hotel, so there are often streams of people wandering by the site, dressed in band uniforms or 3 piece suits, what have you. When kids, around high school age or so happen to wander by in a group, whilst I yank a time clock off of a wall, cutting my hand on the sharp aluminum, I chirp out "Stay in school, kids!" in as cheerful a fashion as I can. "Some geniuses still end up breathing fumes for a living!"
There is an inversely proportional relationship between the amount of safety gear you wear and the relative prestige of your job. Since I am compelled to wear a hard hat, safety glasses, sometimes ear protection, and steel toed boots, that puts my job prestige rather far down the list. This is in comparison to say, an executive, whose main protective gear would be a particularly sturdy tie pin.
There are exceptions to this rule, one being "Astronaut" which is still quite prestigious, though not as much as the "Right Stuff" days.
However, full immersion sewer diver has to be mentioned. Christ. I bet the money is great, though.
There are spike pits here. Fireballs, moving platforms, huge pipes. It's a lot like a Super Mario World level. I'll let you guys know if any mushrooms start sliding around.
No flowers, fire or otherwise, grow in this ruined earth.
(0) comments
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Beetle |10:17 PM| This guy following me around, beetle-ish brow furrowed, with a piece of paper limp in his hand like a flaccid, useless dick is beginning to get on my nerves.
That's not exactly tough, since I'm walking around a construction site with a computer on my shoulder, a bunch of broken crap that needs to be fixed, and apparently a massive, possibly cancer-inducing magnetic field to be defeated.
The magnetic field is destroying the monitor I brought down from Austin to install, and I can almost feel my the iron being pulled out of my blood cells. It is present only at the middle of this desk. Move the monitor 2 feet in either direction and the red/green distortion vanishes. What the hell is this desk sitting on? An atomic reactor? A tiny black hole?
"So who, who fills this out? I don't understand." He says, weakly. I can't stand him.
Granted, I'm not exactly being captain confidently-in-charge. I'm still at the stage of employment where I'm not exactly sure of the organizational structure of this place, and I'm not taking a firm stance on who, exactly, his manager is, as I don't want to be caught in a mistake, and besides, shouldn't he know his own boss?
I've been trying to express that I just need him to go take it to whoever the hell his manager is, and have them approve the purchase of a nicer monitor than the one he has now. I myself have a purchasing authority of exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents. Once again I ask who he reports to, and he lists several names. Christ, who is his manager? That's all I care about. Correction: all that I'm supposed to care about. He walks off towards a managers office, and finds it closed, locked, empty. I can see him mill at this roadblock for a moment, turning slowly, like a dog whose water dish has suddenly vanished. Fuckshit McHelpless is once again incapable of acting on his own.
I do not want to be here. I want to go back to Austin, see the college counselor, and stop breathing in this guy's B.O. I can smell it ruining my clothes, despite the alkali dust being kicked up by all the concrete.
The reason I am posting this, really, is as an example of difference in personal initiative. The computer I'm installing is for a foreman (Let's call him Jack) was originally for someone else (Let's call him Joseph), who nobody seemed to know anymore or be able to find, which means that he had been fired. Jack came up to me and asked if he could have a computer. I told him "Have your manager fill out this form, and heck, I'll give you this one". Jack went, found his manager missing, went and found another manager, had them sign off on it, and came back to find me. I installed his computer in a matter of minutes. This is when I found the rip in the space/time continuum that seemed to exist only on the desk of Jack. We stole another man's desk who was on lunch. Let the lazy, food-eater contend with the ball crushing force of Tesla's ghost.
Fuckshit, on the other hand, had made one or two impotent efforts to figure out who in the hell his own boss is, and has once again returned to me.
(0) comments
View My Stats
-->
