I wake up early this morning and continue with the ongoing habit of my life. For my life is made of habit, and I get grumpy if its changed. Most people must have some kind of habit built up in their daily lives, for if the average person wakes up not knowing where they shall go, or what they shall do, they will most certainly go insane. I am one of these people.
I resigned from my current job on Tuesday afternoon. Having achieved delivery of the vampireware that I've been managing for the past eight months, the managing director had another spirit-crushing project that he was setting me up for. Ethically, I could not start on work that I couldn't deliver to completion, so I had a nice sit-down meeting with him...
It was obvious after 20 minutes that if I were silly enough to stay there, my career would be stalled and my future prospects damaged. He is inherently a nice guy, and I do like him, but I can't work for him any more. He was pretty upset (there being another senior resignation that morning), and I expect he's worried that (a) I'll be really hard to replace and (b) the Technical Services team will probably follow me out the door.
I've not given him any ultimatums or demands -- I've just calmly and logically shown him that he couldn't keep me there even if my money was doubled. I've asked to have his blessing and in return he has mine. On this we are in agreement, which gladdens me.
The feeling that afternoon, having resigned from a firm that I'd lost practically all respect for, was extraordinary. I flew home that night after having a couple of beers in the airport, really happy.
Today I meet my headhunter at lunchtime. We shall see what he can turn up! I fully expect to have to travel more, not less, but if I'm to achieve my goals, that'll be the cost in the near term. Any everythingians in Singapore?
It's funny that I still call him my little brother because he is 18 and taller than me. I guess because I'm older I'm entitled. Over Spring-Break he is coming up to visit me at school. I'll get to show him all that is cool in New York. Maybe we'll go to the zoo.
I spent about 2 hours driving around with my friend looking for printer cartridges for our printers. It is amazing how hard a Staples is to find around here. It is equally amazing that I have spent nearly as much money on ink as I have on the actual printer. I've only had it for six months.
I put a lot of research into my other node w/u today and I'm pleased with the result.
The next remotely noteworthy thing that happened today was in my English class. We just finished reading the libretto for Norma a couple of days ago, and my prof decided it would be good for us to watch about 15 minutes of it. I must say that it was an interesting 15 minutes. The opera was a taping of an outdoor staged performance. There was a terrible windstorm during the performance so in addition to the irritating sound of the wind in the microphone, the characters were nearly blowing away. Watching this was also a cultural experience. The opera was sung in Italian. It was subtitled in Japanese, and there were French scene settings. Perhaps the best part of the opera was that one character looked like a floating head. She had a black dress on and because they didn't have any lights, her body blended into the background.
After classes and some other "fun stuff," I went to Church for Ash Wednesday. Nothing exciting there-- that is until a bat decided to join the congregation. The singers were laughing, and the priest started joking about converting the bat because he seemed to be lost. Things started to get chaotic when the bat began swooping into people. People were laughing like crazy and all hell broke loose, but the priest carried on. I guess you had to be there to enjoy the situation to its fullest.
Now I am off to do tons of homework. Then I'll venture into bed where I probably will stay until exactly 8:50am.
When I see someone changing because that person is told how they are is wrong, it makes me sad. More than sad, it makes me shake in the pit of my stomach. I have that feeling now.
Until a year ago, I always cared what others thought about me. I did what they wanted so that they would think well of me. It mattered more than caring about myself and doing what I felt was right. Peer pressure sucks. I was wrong. I bought into it and denied that which was important to me to fit in, to be thought well of. The price is too high.
Do not ever change who you are because someone tells you that you are wrong or that what you do is bad. If something is important to you, then do it. Care about what YOU think of what you do. Follow your heart, it won't lead you wrong.
gaming no more uninstalled and given away now, more productive
an email recieved a reason given for split last year now makes sense
man running on walk no, many men jumping there actually, quake
Notes written on my whiteboard in the past few days:
Y'know what I don't recommend? Walking barefoot in the cold and rain, no matter how lazy you are (shoes have so many moving parts) or how sorry for yourself you feel. Wah. That is all. ---Sunday, February 25, 2001, 5 A.M.
Y'know what I don't recommend? Walking barefoot in the cold and rain, no matter how lazy you are (shoes have so many moving parts) or how sorry for yourself you feel.
Wah.
That is all. ---Sunday, February 25, 2001, 5 A.M.
I had just stayed up most of the night moping, partly about the fact that P. and I had just decided maybe he should only visit me one night a week so he could have a little more of a life and I could get more work done on weekends, partly because I was in a mood to mope, but not doing a very good job of it (usually a mope only takes a few hours, not an entire evening of sleep dep and slowly doing homework but not nearly enough). The walking in the rain was to return a friend's ecology textbook, from which I'd taken a few notes in preparation for a takehome exam due Monday at 5 P.M.; it was also what made it abundantly clear I was wallowing in my shitty mood, hence the semi-public announcement of that fact.
"I bet if I had enough monkeys on typewriters, they'd write my thesis."---some time February 28, 2001
In quotes because it's something I actually said, verbatim, just like that, and thought it was funny, so I wrote it down. Every now and then I can be witty, or at least think I am.
Mmmmm, thesis. Y'know what? I've all but completely lost my sense of what time it is. Yummy.---I have no idea when, probably within the confines of February 27, 2001.
Although I went to bed at a reasonable hour (~2 A.M.) Sunday evening/Monday morning, the rest of this week hasn't fit any semblance of a normal schedule. The past two nights I've ended up going to bed ~7 A.M., and I've been sleeping in random 3 to 6-hour intervals when I get the chance. Hence my internal clock's mutiny.
~5 p.m., 28 February 2001: I am become one with thesis to the point where I can describe the basics of it (what doesn't require any technical language) in Dutch. It's actually kinda cool.
The fact that I put a time stamp on this sucka indicates that I'm getting pretty self-aware about the whole "thesis owning my life to a degree I didn't really think possible" thing. Not that it's stopped me from continuing along my merry procrastinating and writing at odd intervals and even occasionally but not nearly often enough making some code way. Nope nope nope. Anyway, I had just submitted the abstract for the thesis presentation I'm supposed to do in April, and was thinking about the fact that my grandparents are coming to my graduation, though they've never been to California and it's a heckuva trip from the Netherlands, and then I thought how I'd really like to be able to explain to them at least a little bit what my thesis is about, and I realized it wasn't actually too complicated, considering there's all kinds of weird evolutionary biology, math, computer science, and linguistics involved. Although I'm bilingual, I've never really been to school in Dutch, so it's always cool when I can talk about remotely technical things. Also it's cool to know I can discuss technical things without using excessive jargon, so that all made me happy. Then I was hungry and went to dinner.
The moral of the story: I dunno. Probably that I never learn, even from my mistakes. And that I should be writing thesis, and y'all are hereby cordially invited to send me harassing /msg's to that effect if you catch me on E2 when I should be writing (like now, for instance). Oh well. It's only a draft, and it's due in less than 16 hours, and it'll take less than that to finish it to a state I'm okay with handing in, since I want to sleep and go to class tomorrow (today, whenever the hell it is).
Mother of Pearl and Sister Mary-Go-Round read poetry on the different animals (like A.A. Milne with the koala) while the zoo guide told us factual stuff. We saw the indiginous southern hairy-nosed wombat, the more aggressive of which have been known to "chew through shins." A mutant guinea pig, basically. We also stopped by various bears, giraffes, elephants, the platypus, and birds, like the Macaw, the Sun Conure and Rainbow Lorikeet parrots. Et cetera.
We got to pet the Shingleback Lizard, the Rednecked Wallaby, and the Echidna, each of which has a transmitter that takes its temperature every 30 seconds. The communists use this information for nefarious purposes and I can prove it!!
Sister Mary-Go-Round wore black Converse sneakers without socks.
After the zoo I bought William Goldman's new book then went home and showered off zoo scents.
Accidents in Taiwan, especially scooter collisions, are as common as roadkill in the North Atlantic region of the United States that I come from. They are something you pass by quite regularly, sometimes resolved, sometimes fresh. They are something you sometimes dramatically witness. They are not something you want to be involved with.
As we approached our starting point, we were running down the shoulder of a wide, mostly empty road. One of the two guys was running on the outside, apparently looking ahead at an intersection. A scooter approached from behind, zooming down the road in that characteristic scooter way.
That's when my running buddy, looking ahead, decides to dart across the road. Directly in the path of the scooter. I have no more time to shout a warning than the scooter rider has to react. He simultaneously brakes and swerves horrifically. He wipes out completely. Scooter and man slide sickeningly across the pavement, coming to a stop a few yards in front of me. I am subliminally reminded of so many physics problems... Mass, velocity, force, momentum, gravity, vectors, coefficient of friction. (Wang Chi-Ho weighs 55 kg. He and his scooter wipe out on asphalt pavement with a 2 degree grade travelling at 80 km/hr. At what time will Wang come to a stop and what will his displacement be? Ugh!)
The three, no, the four of us are completely stunned. Here we are, on an almost empty road, dressed out in our running clothes, only somehow none of us are running anymore. Directly before us, motionless, lies the twisted, still form of a man, lying face-first on the road, his scooter on top of him. The situation seems utterly beyond me, utterly detached. This is something that happens in movies, on highways, to bus-drivers and gravel-trucks and drunk drivers. Not to a couple three high-schoolers taking a run. For maybe ten seconds we stand there, taking the situation in, stunned.
Finally, we begin to collect our wits. One of us picks the scooter up, that had been pinning the man's leg. After half a minute or so, the man began to stir. Another scooter, with a woman, pulled to a halt. She asks us in English, "911?" and pulls out her cell phone. She stays away, but makes the call. With the scooter out of the way, we shield the traffic and help gingerly move the man into a better position. I see his face; he has a large, swollen, bloody gash under his eye. He tries to get to his feet. Very carefully, by degrees, we support him until he attains a standing position. Betelnuts spill out of his pocket all over the road. None of us feel qualified to handle the situation. All we ever learned about first aid, procedure, and whatnot now seems lame and useless. The man can't seem to put any weight on his right foot, so we help him to the side of the road. We try to get him to sit down, but he never does. He examines a hand; it is a little bloody too, but seems intact. We apologize in Chinese, but that again seems so impossible. None of us has excellent Chinese, mine was the best of us three. Yet had this Taiwanese man understood English, I would have been just as at loss for words. What do you say? "Dui bu chi," repeats my running partner who caused the whole incident. Sorry. It's all he can think to say, in Mandarin. "My God. Damn," I mutter to myself in English. "Pai say," I repeat to him in Taiwanese. It's one of the tiny handful of Taiwanese phrases I know, but it is the best phrase in my vocabulary for the situation. "Shr wo men de tswo." I say in Mandarin. It's our fault. He hobbles. He examines himself, he examines his scooter. The few rubberneckers who had gathered zipped off, not wanting to get involved. The lady with the cell phone remained, talking to an emergency dispatcher. "Foreigners," she said in Mandarin, "three foreigners." Still the man is silent. He makes an ambiguous motion at us, and plops back on his scooter. We protest in our lame Mandarin. He revs the engine, which growls back to life. "Shr wo men de tswo." I tell him. "Bu shin," I tell him. The women gabbles a couple phrases at him, but he ignores her and slowly eases down the road. We watch as he stops at the next light, then disappears.
The lady with the cell phone has already called off the ambulence. "Dze me le?" I ask her. What next? She shrugs. The three of us remain standing silently at the side of the road as the woman buzzes off. Traffic continues blithely by. There is no sign of anything abnormal, other than perfectly good betelnut strewn across the road.
Somewhere in the city, there is a middle-aged Taiwanese man. He's got a terrific gash on his face. He has cuts on his hand. He can't stand on his right leg. Who knows what abrasions and burns he has under his clothes, what bruises, strains, sprains, tears, even breaks he has. He will minimally be in pain for days. He will have a visible scar on his face for life.
Why did he drive off? Why wouldn't he? Nobody witnessed his accident but three foreign males. Three unscathed foreign males. Probably he didn't trust us. Probably he was intimidated. He just wanted to handle his misfortune on his own. We might have claimed to had nothing to do with his accident, we might have teamed up and said he wiped out completely on his own; there would be no evidence to the contrary, none at all. We might have done worse. Probably he was on betelnut, possibly even alcohol. He could have got in trouble. I don't like to think so. Maybe he had no insurance. But it was clearly our fault, or I should say, my companion's fault. And the man just left. Never said a word, never even whimpered. Hit and run in reverse. And there was nothing we could do about it.
After a while, we stopped standing there, staring at the traffic running past, staring at the clouds in the sky, and at the lights changing from green to amber to red. We started running again.
I woke up today with a weird situation on E2.
I originally wrote a node that I thought would be ironic and even a bit useful. It was my 25th writeup, and it got me promoted to level 2. I'm not really an XP whore, but I was wanting to get to level 2 so I could express my feelings about other people's writeups. There have been so many good factual writeups that I felt deserved some recognition that I couldn't wait to vote on them.
Well, someone immediately slapped my writeup down with the "noding about nodes" link and the reputation started to fall. I understand the need for less self-referential writeups on E2, but it was my first one I tried.
The reputation hovered at -3 for a while, so I decided to nuke it. But during that time I was still allowed to vote. And vote I did.
This morning, I woke up and checked my E2 status. I was back to level 1, but I still had 10 votes! Obviously I was assigned the votes and then they nuked the two writeups (original and nuke request), dropping me down to 24 writeups. So now I have a day to wander E2 as one of the rare level 1 voters. I feel so honoured.
I intend to use this power for good, not evil.
I find it very difficult to continue having feelings. Nothing but sadness and pain bubble up from underneath. My thoughts always go to my grandfather's molesting me. I can't keep it off my mind. Things remind me of it over and over. I hate men right now, again. It's so boring talking about being sad over and over. But it is really painful - I want to cry right now, but I'm at work. Tears keep leaking out of my eyes.
I went to a belly dancing class with my friend last night. It was a lot of fun. I didn't really know what to expect - what can you really learn in eight weeks anyway? She taught us to use our bodies in ways we were taught not to. I expect there will be a lot more of that coming up. It was cool - I think this class will help me reclaim my body - if I let it - and love my body for what it can do, not what it isn't or doesn't look like. The women there were all different shapes and sizes and ages. I really like that, because I don't feel like I'm the oldest one there.
I was definitely the heaviest one there. Not by a whole lot, though, and it didn't actually bother me. I really want to lose this last 20 pounds that have been refusing to budge for the past year. I know what it's all about, anyway. I keep choosing foods that will not contribute to weight loss. I've been doing that because it feels safer to hide behind the fat. Like I'm more protected from pain, or men, or my sexuality, or new things. When all it really does it prevent me from growing. The past two weeks I've been trying to force new awareness of this issue to myself. To really understand it and believe it. I am the one choosing inactivity and fatty foods. The previous 20 or more pounds came off in less than a year. Now I have maintained that weight loss for about 14 months. So, yes, that's obviously something I've learned to do, great.
The visit out west was a wonderful experience for the entire family, and I appreciated enormously the fact that I had the time to do more than the perfunctory visit. We spent, as I have heard it called, assloads to quantity time together. Having parents so far away (over 3000 km) is trying, and I have to take every chance I can get to make sure that they have a role in my son's life. I was raised very far away from my own grandparents, and I can say I am unequivocally a poorer person for it.
Since returning, I have been correcting my students' biostatistics mid-term exam. This has been a trying, difficult experience to date. The professor and I agreed that the exam was more than fair prior to giving it to the students, and we also allotted an extra hour (three rather than two) to them so that they wouldn't feel rushed in their calculations. Despite this, the average is hovering around 55%, and a frightening number of the students really have no clue what they're talking about. The reason that this is frustrating to me is that I have gone to great pains to put the emphasis during my presentations on the theory and the big picture, rather than on the simple formulae themselves, and I have the distinct impression that the large majority of the students did nothing more than look at those very formulae. Anyone who has taken a good course in statistics knows that the math is of secondary importance; the essential information that must be absorbed is the why, and not the how, of biostatistics. Any idiot can plug values into their calculator. The hard part is understanding which method to apply and why the data require certain modifications.
I'll give you an example. One of the questions on the test asked the students to perform a Mantel test. The details of the test are not important, but suffice it to say that to compute the test you need two distance matrices, and you compute the correlation between them. We gave the students the following matrix: XXXX 1940 1960 1980 2000 1920 0.326 0.415 0.673 0.847 1940 XXXX 0.574 0.558 0.787 1960 XXXX XXXX 0.478 0.652 1980 XXXX XXXX XXXX 0.500 This distance matrix represents a measure of the similarity of a vegetation community over time (again, this is not particularly germane to my explanation here). The first question asked the students to calculate the second data matrix which should represent the distance in time. In fact, we even told the students to calculate the euclidean distance in time. Now, for those who don't know, the euclidean distance is simply the distance between two points in space (cf. Pythagorean theorum). So, if we know the years at which the data were collected, is it hard to calculate the distance in time between observations? In fact, they didn't even need a formula; the distance between 1920 and 1940 is (drumroll please) .... 20 years! So, the second distance matrix is: XXXX 1940 1960 1980 2000 1920 20.0 40.0 60.0 80.0 1940 XXXX 20.0 40.0 60.0 1960 XXXX XXXX 20.0 40.0 1980 XXXX XXXX XXXX 20.0 Now, was that so hard? I ask that sincerely, because of the thirty copies I have corrected so far, three got the answer right, and at least 20 didn't even try to respond.
After computing this matrix, the Mantel test consists of multiplying each value in the first matrix by the corresponding value in the second matrix and calculating the sum of these products.
I suppose the reason that I feel so stressed and frustrated over this exam is that I feel responsible for their success. I don't (contrary to the fears and supersition of many undergraduate students) want them to fail, or take some sort of sadistic pleasure in watching them bomb. No, they're my charges, and I feel responsible for their failure, which is probably a little bit backwards. Ideally, if a student fails what is was, clearly, a reasonable exam, it is to some extent their fault. Perhaps we should have made it clearer to them what the exam would look like (the course was totally revamped this year), but still ...
OK, that's more than enough ranting and spleen-venting. I'm off to finish up marking, and I suppose I should steel myself for the inevitable shitstorm that's going to come down on all of our heads. I've heard that the ombudsman might be getting involved ...
Time marches on. Thus begins the first day of a new month.
Yeah Yeah Yeah. It's March 1st.
Typical nightly traffic last night. A few SunRPC scans here - a few DNS scans there. The occasional NetBus attempt. Same old shit. Except... I wasn't expecting a 2 meg log file this morning.
It seems one of our customers got nmapped. Again. This happened last month, too. The source is from the same Class C, so it's most definitely the same person. I called their ISP and sent them the log. The tremendous log. The log that took more than 10 seconds to send on a dual T1. He said he'd investigate the incident and get back to me. Cool.
Both yesterday and today, I stopped at the local Japanese market to pick up the "Vegetable Stew with Rice" bowl for lunch, and both times I went, they were closed. Yesterday was weird, because their hours stated they'd be open. Today, they didn't open until 10 AM, and it was only quarter 'til when I drove by. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.
I think I need a mousepad.
Lunch Log: Einstein Bros Bagel - The "Holey Cow" - Roast Beef, Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato, and Mayo on an onion bagel. Apple Juice, and a bag of garlic bagel chips. My breath is going to be wonderful today.
Today I can't stop thinking about Mark. I just met him this semester and he immediately attracted me. He has an odd sense of humour and a sort of hidden vulnerableness that intrigues me. In any case I don't know him all that well, though I would like to get to know him better. I have two classes with him but I only sit with him in math. In the other class, OS, he sits with a group of his friends, whom I find intimidating. I am easily intimidated.
So, today I was chit-chatting on ICQ with him:
<Kitten> How was your spring break? Did you get to see old high school friends? <Mark> I have no friends back home. <Kitten> No friends back home? Why not? <Mark> Because I am different.
Immediately I know he is referring to the fact that he is gay. But I am in denial. I grew up in an open-minded family and group of great friends. Surely his peers didn't hate him because he is gay? Of all the qualities a person could offer in friendship, what could be more insignificant than sexual orientation? It just blows me away. So in my stupidity I write:
<Kitten> Everyone's different. Didn't you go to kindergarten?
As if saying that I see him no differently than I see others would somehow make this painful fact for him go away.
<Mark> Different in different ways. It means that people hate me.
"NO!", I want to scream. "It doesn't mean people hate you. I don't hate you." The realization that I have led a sheltered life comes crashing down. I'm not stupid. I know prejudice exists out there. It's just that in meeting people from far away, who didn't grow up in my circle of life, that it really hits home.
<Kitten> I don't hate you. Screw the people that hate you. They don't know what they're missing.
They don't.
I have been putting on make-up a little heavy lately, disgarding the bra and curling my hair. Hm. Shit. I have also been swaying my hips sexily as I walk lately. I don't know why. I lack the grace of strippers though. And the money.
It is just so damn shiny outside. Snow, street, sidewalk, rooves, trees. Covered in reflectiveness. It is impossible to walk outside. Poor crystal-boned elderly. Even a small fall can make them break something.
So, 1 more month of school. That's it. It will be over. Then I can do the ritual burning sacrifice of my GPA.
Really, I had the whole day (week really) planned out, with lovely times spent with lovely peoples, work was going fine, the car, the computer, - voice mail was the last thing on my mind...but it used to work...
First off, after the less than steller night I had yesterday - working late...missing all my friends when I had planned to see them...etc...
This morning - sleep right through the alarm...get a wake up call from a friend who I missed yesterday and planned to see today telling me she might not - she wants to go see a band with another friend in it - maybe. Anyway she didn't think I'd be home and that caught her off guard...but having been sick previously, the extra sleep won't hurt me and is a great explaination...that and I planned on a half day of work anyway...She really didn't expect me there at all...I wonder...Odd...very odd...so I get ready for work.
I get to work - just in time for lunch. That actually goes well and back to the office where the two minor code changes I implimented in my function - failed miserably...things couldn't survive simplest of tests. Debuggers wouldn't help me see these errors...Frustraiting as can be. Then more paprework needs to be done...NO!
MONKEY SICK OF PAPERWORK
Let me finish my code, then the paperwork, damnit. Let me do something USEFUL!!
Then I catch the time...I need to check my voicemail - to see what's up for tonight...busy...back to work...About 30 minutes later...busy...back to frustrations with malloc and free...and dereferencing pointers...try voicemail...busy...call home, just to check...busy...weird!
More work, more pointer/malloc errors...yuch...frustrate myself completely...want to kill (an expression, but...how do you kill code? (rhetorical/sarcasm))...check voicemail...busy...DAMN!...busy...ARGH!...busy........
...busy...
Just leave early - relax...go home...then I get stuck in traffic! FOR THE LOVE OF ANY GOD! NO!
Just about a forty-five minute session of the least patient experience I ever have in my life swearing at any SOB who cuts me off...my car starts the whining, high pitched, whirring noises...Yes my druges, it gets worse!...
After I'm home I call the lovely lady I do so enjoy spending even a trifle of time with (this actually applies to many people, but I called the one with whom arrangements for some shared activity might be enjoyed)...busy... I try my voicemail from home...busy...I call the operator...ring...ring...{much discussion about voicemail problems and the two days (!!!!) they will need to have it fixed}...
Just maybe her cell phone...ring...(yes!)..."(groggy voice:) hello?"...yes my hopeful friends and interested readers...she is sick...
And now I have all this pent up frustration from a day of miserable madness...and I need to release this energy...I need also to decide what to do for dinner...And hope my insurance covers food poisoning...
Today was a great E2 day. I got three C!'s and picked up a fan or two along the way.
This is such a great outlet for writing. Maybe I'm just a frustrated author.
Or I'm just a lucky guy today.
He didn't want to do it that way. He wants to go forward with the complicated API because some day we might use alternate functions of the software application in combination with the main function. This sucks. So we are going to spend two weeks developing this application interface code which will accomplish the same goal as my idea which would only take an hour to develop and another hour to run.
I got back from lunch and my boss had
