[redux]

Impatience

2012-01-16T19:27:00.003-06:00

Amazon Prime has ruined me. The mere idea that something I ordered over the weekend will not arrive tomorrow is more than just upsetting or frustrating - it is appalling. I have no fewer than 4 orders in the air (or on the ground, more likely) right now, a majority of those were ordered to give me something to work on while I mourn the loss of my main computer.

I have been curiously active since my the machine stopped booting for good a few days ago. I am waiting for Asus' incredibly slow support team to get me an RMA number so I can ship the motherboard off and get a new one which will hopefully fix my problems. Problems being systems lockups in BIOS and during POST and randomly (and inconsistently) identifying RAM as bad.

I've also finished my book, and I can't bring myself to pirate or purchase another one since it won't be able to live up to my expectations at the moment. I've just finished Dark Sky, the third and final book in Patrick Lee's Travis Chase series. It was a wild ride, but I expected no less after reading and loving both The Breach and Ghost Country. The trilogy is an immensely entertaining blend of sci-fi and action that is sure to have you hooked from the start. Sad as I am that the series is over, I am pleased with the ending - Lee didn't leave any loose ends of lingering plot arcs to frustrate me. I am, unfortunately, cursed with a terrible memory when it comes to books. It has been well over a year since I read The Breach and Ghost Country, so of course I have little recollection of the goings-on contained in their pages except for the broad story arcs. Now that I can read the whole of the series in a single straight shot, I aim to read it all over again in a quick burst to get the maximum effect. Think of it as watching all three Bourne movies right in a row - but better.

My old 20" LCD had been making horrible squealing noises for months now, but I've been able to ignore it well enough. Now that my primary distraction is promising to be knocked out for a week I couldn't stand it any longer which is why it is now lying - in pieces - on my kitchen table, waiting for the USPS to hurry up and bring me some new components from DigiKey. It has been all of a day and a half since I placed the order now, and already I am frustrated with how long it has taken. I am eager to break out my shiny new soldering iron and get the display back to (silent) working order. Working with my hands is often the best distraction I have when not satiated with constant internet.

In that vein, I have a pair of dev kits coming from SparkFun. Fresh off my Free Day victory at SparkFun, I ordered a USB RFID kit and TI's MSP430 Chronos kit. They should provide me with some entertainment if not a bit of learning. I have long been fascinated with RFID, so this will be a chance to play with it in the confines of my own home. But of course, as with everything else, it's in the mail.

I have been thankful once again for my DAC if only because it meant that I didn't have to go dig up a 3.5mm to RCA cable to get music playing from my laptop through my delightful 2.1 setup. After much agonizing, I ended up with a pair of NHT SuperZero 2.0's and an Hsu STF-2. I'm still adoring my Maverick Audio TubeMagic D1, and my cheap little solid-state amp is doing well enough - for now. I was lusting after some bigger closer-to-full-range speakers such as the Paradigm Atoms and the PSB Alphas, but I came to rest on the NHTs after reading a number of glowing reviews. In all honestly, I ordered the subwoofer first - it was on sale over Black Friday and, having heard wonderful things about Hsu subs from my good friend and audio sherpa Jon, I jumped on the sale without a second thought. That left me full of turkey from the holiday and without a decent pair of bookshelf speakers. Since I already had the sub in hand, I no longer needed to worry about bass response - I'd have plenty. The SuperZeros are astonishingly cheap when you look at bookshelf speakers, and even compared to other entry-level speakers, they are on the less-expensive side of things. They have smaller drivers - a 1" silk-dome tweeter and a 4.5" wood pulp cone woofer - than others in their price class, and their frequency response looks a bit strange at first - they roll off around 95Hz on the low end. This, however, pairs perfectly with the STF-2. The SuperZeros have brilliant mids and highs, just as every review I read said they would. Even at nearfield listening (~2ft in my case) they sound excellent. Imaging is top-notch, especially given their less-than-ideal placement on my desk. I picked up a pair of AudioEngine DS2 desktop stands for them which has - much to my surprise - helped quite a bit. As a sidenote, the SuperZeros don't fit the stands perfectly - the stands stick out about an inch past the front of the speakers, but it doesn't look too strange. I may try to rig up a way to move the NHT's closer to the front in the future. For under $40, though, the DS2s are solid stands.

I am in no way qualified to write speaker reviews. I have learned that I barely have a copper ear, let alone a golden one. It is sufficient to say that I am very pleased with the setup. The only upgrade I'm lusting after now is a less bargain-basement amplifier. There will always be something.

Invasive Thoughts and Marriage

2011-11-16T20:26:00.001-06:00

The wind is picking up; the weather becoming more tumultuous for a moment before it dies back down. It is warm, obscenely so, especially considering the past few mornings where I could see my breath as I walked the short distance between my third-floor apartment and the garage where my car rests. It is sticky. Just yesterday my heat was on. Today I have all my windows open. It is supposed to storm tonight, and it feels eerily still outside. The frogs and crickets are chirping, quieter now after this last cold snap, but still present. I am desperate for a storm to come tonight, to break this absurd heat snap, unwelcome in the midst of late fall. Sleeping will be a struggle tonight.

Marriage is on everyone's mind. A couple just got engaged - two friends of mine - and despite the inevitability of it all, there is still a buzz in the air. It's the difference between saying that you intend to do something and actually going through with it. It all seems so dangerous, so exciting and risky. I have always been a romantic, but I have usually managed to keep that to myself. So much of me is suspicious, skeptical of things I don't know and, even worse, things that I do know. I'm never quite sure of my own feelings about things. Whether this is a purposeful emotional disconnect or some built-in malfunction in the part of my being that houses the 'appropriate emotional responses' data I am not sure. I never seem to react correctly, at least not compared to the other people who I watch react to the same news. I make an effort to react similarly, though I constantly fear that others notice my longer-than-normal latency with said responses. I don't often feel the correct response to a situation. I must stop and think about it first, putting aside my first few gut reactions until I settle on something that seems appropriate.

Marriage. That's where I was going. It forces you - or at least me - to reevaluate everything. It is strange that the decisions of one pair of people can so strongly effect my outlook, even if it does happen to be only temporarily. I have spent a lot more time thinking about marriage and commitment in the context of my life. At the very least, it has made me less patient as a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden influx of invasive thoughts. I find myself suddenly analyzing every interaction, seeking out what I like and what I cannot stand. What I cannot live without and what I abhor. It is exhausting and distracting and exhilarating to be cataloging my interactions this way. There are some hurdles that I have to ask myself, ones that I will not share here. Things that, unfortunately for me, cannot be easily answered without actually living them first. I have so far found it impossible to give myself satisfactory answers. I can only imagine, than, that the day my relentless search yields a concrete answer will be the one on which I know what I must do next.

It is both wonderful and terrifying.

Long Overdue

2011-10-25T20:07:00.005-05:00

I'm making an effort to start writing again, yes. So far everything is living in separate files on Google Docs - I need to warm up my typing fingers and get them back into English mode after months of typing little other than C++ syntax. I also need to find my voice again.

I wrote the beginnings of a review of a new piece of audio equipment. It reads to me now as pompous and absurdly abstract, just like every other review of a piece of audio equipment. I guess I should expect things which are almost wholly subjective to be described in highly opinionated words.

The new blogger interface is amazing and beautiful; far cleaner and more open than it used to be. I don't feel like I am trimming down my words to fit in the old static-sized box that seemed to shrink over the years as my monitors got bigger. It feels more like, well, writing now.

I'm making an effort to come back. I know very few of you - if anyone - are still here. We'll see.

Remember

2011-08-01T20:44:00.003-05:00

Oh blog.

I've told myself that I'm going to start writing again, mostly because I promised Tim a short story-like thing and I have been losing my grasp on the English language at an alarming rate.

Today I resolved to practice drums for at least a little while every day. I've grown tired of playing all the time for a few weeks then stopping completely when I get off the rotation at church. Every day, even if it's just for a small bit.

I also, apparently, resolved to make a valiant attempt at growing a beard. I realize that is a frightening prospect, but I went to work with my sad not-sure-what-to-call-it facial hair, so that must mean I'm committed to it, right? I look absurd. I'm hoping that eventually I will look less absurd.

It feels weird to be breaking in my keyboard all over again. I don't even remember most of my vocabulary; everything has devolved into project-specific jargon at work. I've been so immersed (in a good way) in everything there that I've stopped thinking in other terms altogether when I enter work mode.

I should read more.

I should do a lot of things.

Living

2011-07-24T19:33:00.003-05:00

June 18? I think this may be some kind of record as far as my ability to get distracted. I've been working a lot lately, and... and all kinds of other excuses.

I started writing two weeks ago; it went something like this:

There is a sickly-sweet feeling weighing in my head right now, a heavy, solid mass of largely-uninterpreted emotion that’s sitting on my brain stem restricting the flow of information to the rest of my brain. I’m stuck focusing on a single euphoric event while trying desperately to fit in little bits of other thoughts into the gaps that are few and far between. It has not been good for my productivity. In fact, it has been awful for getting anything done. Except eating, I guess.

Went to the doctor this morning; was told to not eat breakfast - fine, I can handle that. I packed a post-appointment breakfast to eat at work and set off to get a physical. Three vials of blood later, I was sitting on the examination table sweating like crazy trying my damnedest not to fall off the table (or fall asleep). The doctor gave me a glucose gel-thing that was incredibly difficult to eat but was surprisingly effective. Beyond that, I’m doing pretty ok I guess. I’ve put on some weight over the past few years, but now that I have a prescription for an inhaler, I can embark on a renewed attempt to retain some semblance of activity and, therefore, health.

As for the actual distractions, they are a different story.

But I never made it back to fill in the rest of the story.

I've actually been doing things lately, which is strange because I've been spending an incredible amount of time with Chelsea. For the sheer amount of time I've spent lying on the couch watching TV, I've gotten a number of things done that make me feel decidedly less lazy. In what can only be described as an ordeal, I mostly-successfully hung a curtain yesterday. The 'mostly' comes from the fact that the center bracket isn't actually holding any weight whatsoever, and, in fact, the curtain rod is likely supporting it. The drywall was thin and brittle and the provided drywall anchors were less than useful. The curtains are, however, attached to the wall and they seem to be sturdy enough. The nigh-impenetrable studs on either side of my window saw to that - and to making me drill more holes in my walls that I'm proud to admit. I'm going to have a lot of holes to fill and patch when I leave, but that's a problem for Future Mike. He is far better equipped to handle that problem.

There are other things afoot, but few of them are exciting.

I am now back in what I would call a relationship. After what seems to have been the perfect amount of time, I got another unexpected answer to a long-standing prayer dealing with my sense of romantic loneliness. I may/may not still be in the euphoric first-few-weeks stage. Maybe.

As it turns out, I don't hate sushi. In some cases, I rather enjoy it. I do wish it was cut into more bite-sized pieces, though. So far, that is my sole complaint: I want it to fit into my mouth more easily.

Work is work. I had a week where I got approximately 15 minutes of real work done and spent the other 43 hours in the office doing something of which I have no memory. Fortunately, it lasted only a single week and I am back to working hard (ish) and being challenged. I am enjoying my project and, even as I keep getting told to brace for a bad third and fourth quarter, I haven't felt a slowdown at all due to the decidedly frequent release schedule I'm caught up in. It is a learning experience to be sure.

I am doing well.

Electromagnetism

2011-06-18T17:45:00.002-05:00

Things are tumultuous. I really do enjoy that word, so I use it whenever possible, usually to describe the weather. But at the moment? My social landscape is tumultuous.

It's probably my own fault; I do have that funny problem where talking to people about my thoughts makes them not want to talk to me anymore. Moderation is a not-insignificant problem for me in this arena, I guess.

I find that, as a rule, making mistakes is more exciting than doing everything the right way. The problem is, at what point do you realize that you have made too many mistakes? It's a fine line between having an accidental adventure and harming yourself and others.

I learned that, contrary to my beliefs about myself, I can summon a monumental amount of self-control if a situation calls for it. I am capable of ignoring the actions my mind tells me to take in favour of more reserved actions. I cannot, however, stop my mind from imagining scenarios live and in colour, complete with moments of vivid daydreams interspersed with real life. That my mind will, without any warning, suddenly switch back and forth between a dream sequence and real life is a troubling reality.

Then again, reality itself is often troubling.

I don't like secrets. I mean, I love knowing things that are secret - it's a guilty pleasure - but learning things that I'm not supposed to tell anyone else generally ends poorly. It's not that I'm bad at keeping secrets; it's more that I want to know too much. I don't just want to know your secret, I want to know about it, I want the specifics, I want to know how it affects you and me and everyone else. Most people don't like to be interviewed about their secrets, though. It must just be hard enough to tell them. I try not to have too many secrets. I have things I'd rather not talk about, but generally enough people know that it can't be considered a secret.

I do wish, though, that people would be more blunt. I only like coy games up until a point. No, I can't guess what you want me to know, so how about you just tell me and we'll both know? It's more efficient. It lets you have more time with the information than without it.

Of course, the games can be fun too. A good game can build electricity like wool socks on a carpet in the winter. The sparks and the magnetism are undeniably thrilling, but the shock at the end has the potential either to be wholly exhilarating or completely destructive. It's a gamble - one we take only because the buildup is so terribly euphoric. Regardless of how a situation may end, that process of building up electricity, feeling a little jolt at a touch, hearing your heart beat faster, constantly trying to outsmart is unmatched by anything I, at least, have ever felt. I love the back-and-forth of it all, the growing energy feeding off one another, the eventual meltdown when it becomes too much.

I may be getting too personal and introspective.

On a completely unrelated but just as emotionally important note, I finally got my headphones, the ones that I've been dreaming about for three years. Long story short, they are everything I wanted them to be. It's amazing to, after 23 years, finally have in-ears that fit and seal properly. I know the rest of you have been making do with universals, but I have abnormally tiny ear canals (my audiologist confirmed my suspicions) and have never had in-ear headphones that fit properly. I've been loving my Sennheiser HD-555s for a bit over a year now, especially after making a few modifications to them, but my JHAudio JH13's are in a completely different universe. I could talk about headphones all day if you let me. You probably shouldn't.

I should start packing for this move. Half my house is already at the new apartment; I don't have much to eat here besides off-brand Lucky Charms, orange juice, and some mike&ike that I bought because I needed to break a 20.

Poor Decisions

2011-05-22T01:50:00.004-05:00

This, moreso than any other moment in my life so far, might be the one where I am confident that I have lost mind. Given one bad situation and I'm suddenly reverting to the me I was in high school. Awkward, frightened and confident in nothing but my ability to destroy. I can't be sure what it means. Have I really remained unchanged for the last 5 years? Am I some static personality, a supporting cast member in my own life? Hell, I'm even reverting back to the vapid, formless writing style I so adored in my younger days.

What is it that can so throughly break my ability to reason so suddenly and with such accuracy? I spent far too much of my time watching, as if a spectator to my life, myself make terrible decisions, all the while shouting at the screen how wrong that decision was, or how obvious this clue should have been. I'm actually shouting now, at some form of me that thinks it's a good idea to be writing after this much alcohol and this late at night. (Hint: it's a terrible idea).

On the bright side, my camera seems to be ok now that I was able to get the delete button unstuck. I was worried for a while, but I was able to work it loose and everything is happy again.

I have the hardest time ignoring myself.

This was probably a poor decision.

Emotion

2011-05-16T20:26:00.003-05:00

I am far too easily coerced into identifying emotionally with even poorly-constructed characters in the media I consume. I have, more times than I care to admit, gone to bed feeling crushingly depressed because of an event that occurred on a show or something I failed to prevent in a video game. Of course, this means that, on average, I get way more enjoyment out of games even though I am terrible at them - and I am far too forgiving of TV show gaffes since I so want things to be the way they are presented.

I might feel too much.

It is because of this that Heavy Rain is both incredible and the worst thing for me. It is a masterpiece of an interactive movie/game - I haven't played anything that approaches it before - but at the same time, it is a terribly tragic story spread across four (so far) relateable and believable characters. I've started to adopt personalities for each character so far, such that I never really have to wonder what I, playing that role, will do in any situation. Once presented with the options for any situation the game places me in, I am able to feel out what I - as this digitally-rendered actor - will do. It is an exceptionally curious feeling once the game is shut off, but it is incredibly immersive if I don't try to think too hard about the whole thing.

I might also be crazy.

I'm back in insurance hell again; my largely-useless dental insurer is adding new hoops through which I am expected to jump. I feel bad every time I start to think about complaining - after all, I am already decidedly fortunate to have insurance in the first place - but somehow that feeling is not so comforting. I think the biggest hurdle is my intense dislike for talking on the phone with strangers.

I'm back in headphone dreamland, but this time I think I might stop talking and lusting after all of them and order an end-all-be-all pair just to be done with it. I have to finish my insurance nonsense first; then I can deal with that.

Though I managed to miss the actual release date, the new Manchester Orchestra album, Simple Math, is excellent. Considerably more chill than their past albums, but I like it all the same. It has sort-of a Sunny Day Real Estate vibe to it I think.

I've been feeling more and more guilty that I seemingly abandoned songwriting for the pursuit of an education, but I can't seem to start writing again. I'm not sure what to do about it.

Goodnight.

Lunch

2011-05-08T20:11:00.004-05:00

I've gone back to taking peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. (With honey, not jelly - clearly the superior complement) It's like I'm back in grade school again, except I don't have a tupperware container of apple slices, baby carrots, or grapes. There's no room in my lunchbox these days. No, it's the sandwich and chips for lunch, and a container of peanuts for an afternoon snack.

It stems from that fact that I don't enjoy eating. Not that peanut butter is bad in any way - it is simply the utilitarian lunch choice. Two nondescript slices of storebought bread slathered with peanut butter and drizzled with honey, slapped together and stuck in a plastic container. I have to be careful to keep my lunchbox horizontal as long as possible in order to keep the honey from seeping out and making the outside of the bread all sticky. There is little joy in my lunches; only a necessary (and sometimes welcome) break in the middle of the day to keep me from falling asleep in the afternoon. It is usually effective. I derive little or no pleasure from eating. If given the hypothetical opportunity to take a pill once a day rather than eat, I would accept it in an instant. The only good that comes of eating regularly is camaraderie - people seem to bond over food.

After accepting my newfound paunch, I set a bunch of clothes in the "donate" box sitting in my upstairs hallway and went to shop for some new clothes (with some guidance). From this adventure, I now have clothes that accommodate my added weight and look less like I'm still in high school. I have never been a snappy dresser, but some effort is better than none. Incidentally, I also learned that I (a) am shaped like a goose and (b) have a nice butt (but only in certain jeans). I have not ever in my whole life spent so much time in a dressing room modeling clothes, but the lengthy process seems to have turned out well. At the very least, it was an enjoyable way to spent a Sunday afternoon.

I'm trying to motivate my fellow podcast hosts, as it has been more than a month since our last episode. I'm excited about the project, but not so much that I've spent much time on the website. I need to do some research on Wordpress theming, but I've been a strange mix of busy and lazy. We're all pretty excited about it, though. It's a lot of fun to record, but I do need to get used to setting aside a bit more time to work over the recordings after we've finished. I imagine it'll take a few episodes before we really get a format nailed down. It's the first new thing I've tried to do in a while, though, and I really want to stick with it. I need something other than TV to fill my time.

Speaking of time, my weekend is rapidly drawing to a close. These next few weeks months of work are going to be busy. Coupled with my upcoming movie and the wedding in July, I have a lot on my plate. I'm praying that I can start to ramp up my motivation for the extra workload. It should be fun - genuinely enjoyable.

A Handing Off

2011-05-01T20:10:00.002-05:00

I have spent the past four days eating ice cream, drinking fruit juice, and generally doing a staggering amount of nothing.

I had my wisdom teeth out on Thursday; a process which did not live up to my expectations. The most stressful part was having the anesthesia needle stuck in my arm, but by that point I already had a mask with the laughing gas flowing, so I didn't care much. I also didn't care ~10 seconds later when I disappeared into a glorious patch of lost time during which, I am told, four of my teeth were removed. I woke up and, with the exception of a short time with drunk legs, was fine. I never even had to break out the oxycodone - there has been a surprisingly small amount of pain compared to the monumental event I was told to expect. Mostly it's just been annoying; I enjoy eating solid food from time to time.

I beat Portal 2 again, this time with the developer commentary on. It really is an incredible game. It is still the best game I have ever played by far. Remember how fanatical I was about Mass Effect and Fallout 3? It's better than both combined, even though it took only a fraction of the time of either to complete. Portal 2 is, without a doubt, the best piece of interactive entertainment ever produced. I'm taking it that far. The more analysis I read of the story the more this feeling is cemented. The Half-Life storyline might be a bit more epic due to sheer length, but if the two worlds are connected as was foreshadowed for the long-overdue Half-Life 2: Episode 3, Valve will truly have the greatest story ever told in a series of games on its hands.

I spent a bit of time cleaning out my room; I'm trying to cut down the number of things I have to move come June. I have a great deal of shirts that I'm keeping tucked away in a drawer because of sentimental value. I don't wear any of them - they're either too old or too small - but I still have every shirt from every production; all of my MSOE spirit shirts; and all the band t-shirts (including those that are signed) hidden away. I guess I could be keeping worse things that shirts as mementos. I also finally admitted to myself that there's not reason to hold onto the skinny-ish jeans from my emo rocker days. As much as I'd love to return to that persona, I've grown far too chubby to fit into them and really, I don't look great in skinny jeans anyhow. They, along with the plethora of bland coloured golf shirts from my tenure at Menards, are now in the 'donate' box that has been slowly growing in the hallway outside my room.

I finally tore down my acoustic drums, but I haven't been able to convince myself to sell them yet. There's something about that scrappy set - the shows that were played, the songs that were written - that makes it hard to sell them. They're a bit beat up and they're held together with a mishmash of hardware that came from who-knows-where, but they're mine - my first set, bought with money from my first job. I'm spending too much energy reminiscing about drums.

I haven't quite worked out how I'm going to fit everything into my new room which, like the apartment that contains it, is smaller than my current one. I should be able to stash my dresser in the closet, which might open up enough space for the drums to fit in a corner. Plus I won't have these absurd doors out to the deck I never use. Windows, especially third floor ones, will be far, far better for airflow. The reduced space will be a challenge, but it is one I welcome - I have too much useless shit as it is. I wish that we could hurry up and move already. The wait is killing me. I hate the process of moving - having to reorganize everything; to settle in all over again - and so the anticipation is even worse. Fortunately, I have a number of friends who are eager (or at least willing) to help us move in exchange for baked goods and alcohol, so I am blessed in that regard.

I do believe that it is time to go pack a lunch. I haven't been to work in what feels like ages - time seems to pass more slowly when lying on the couch for days on end.

Observance

2011-04-24T17:49:00.005-05:00

Oh blog, how I neglect you.

Today has been mixed. Honestly, this whole week has been exhausting. It's quickly getting to be the end of Sunday and I'm starting to feel panicked about having to get up tomorrow morning and appear cheerful at work. I've been getting this way more and more lately - afraid of the end of the weekends. I don't know why or what it is that's changed, but I don't like it. Fear feels like the wrong emotion. Then again, I don't know what it's supposed to be. I've just been exhausted and scatterbrained; unable to concentrate on anything (with the exception of Portal 2) in weeks now.I've been spending more time than I should on reddit and making excuses to socialize in order to avoid doing, well, anything.

But what good is complaining. I have plenty of worrying that I could be doing instead. Though I am somewhat excited by the prospect of a three-day work week followed by a few days of ice cream and bed rest (and prescription painkillers), I am worried already about the anesthetization involved in having my wisdom teeth out. I don't like not being in control - I'm just barely hanging onto some shred of dignity normally; I shudder to think what I'll do when I'm totally fried like that. I don't even like getting drunk for fear of losing control. What is done is done, I suppose.

This morning (is it really Easter? Doesn't feel like it) was bad enough - a harrowing tale in which I started playing the wrong song at the wrong tempo to open up a 9.30am Easter Morning church service while the rest of the band stared at me in horror. People in the crowd claimed they couldn't tell, but I was well aware of my mistakes. Everybody, as I am told, gets one. The rest of the morning went better, but I was still shaken to the point where I wasn't able to find a groove and really get back into playing. I was shaky at best.

I should write a Portal 2 review separate from this angsty post because it really was the best game I have ever played.

I did get my new drums and, though I haven't put in the time yet to set them up perfectly, I find myself liking them quite a bit. I ended up with an Alesis DM10 Studio kit; the 2011 edition with the 4-post rack. Most of my worries about switching to electronic drums for practicing have mostly faded away; the Alesis pads feel pretty good and, as a bonus, use standard drum heads so I can tighten and loosen them as I see fit. I am still thinking I'll follow one of the many tutorials I've found to convert them to mesh heads both for the sake of noise and for feel. It's not all roses, though; I had intended to get the Blue Jay sound pack as well, since I don't really need or want all of the world percussion or electronics (or cartoon noises), but I learned that the set didn't have variable hi-hat voices. I'm getting very particular, of course, and I am confident most of you don't care. It is sufficient to say that I am very pleased with my drums so far; especially for the price compared to what else I could have gotten.

What else, what else. Mostly just my lack of motivation.

I am ready to live closer to work and friends, but I still dread the thought of moving. I have so many things that I might someday want to use that I now have to pack up and move someplace else, being careful to not break anything in the process. Fortunately, I have a number of friends who are more than happy to help - and for this I am eternally grateful. Emotional trauma - such as that experienced by the exceedingly peculiar when being forced to move - is best when shared among friends.

I've now had pinkeye twice in three weeks; today should wrap up the 7 days of post-symptom treatment. I'll be holding on tightly to my bottle of prescription eye drops in case my left eye decides to try to build an army of orcs again.

Last weekend, I should mention, was decidedly exciting. I took off work on Friday to fly up to Hartford and help Tim pick out tuxes for his wedding in August. It was an excellent trip during which I was, among other things, a bad influence, exposed to new musical styles, and introduced to some interesting (and from my point of view, glamourous) people. It was a nice vacation, and visiting a best friend can never be considered a bad thing. We decided on brown tuxes (there were no grey), but the bride makes the final decision. I was also brought along to a very unique percussion concert at Hartt that left me feeling somewhat elated. I then partied the night away (in the tamest sense of the word) with composers and musicians and felt very left out of their artistic world which I so envy whenever I get near enough to it.

The sudden outbreak of weddings (and by 'outbreak' I mean two weddings and a proposal) has me thinking. Both couples have assured me I can bring a date; an offer which has made me laugh. It's strange, people expect you to be with someone. To be alone is somehow abnormal now at this age. I remember in high school it was the other way around - even in college, for the most part. I'm not sure when the switch happened, but I certainly missed it. Not that I lament the fact - I've gotten quite good at being single without slipping into the forever alone mindset - but it is curious how just a few months affects general expectations.

Seriously, the Cr-48 needs a delete key. And end/home keys. And a better trackpad. It was free; I should stop complaining about it.

It's starting to get hot in Carolina; I haven't yet decided when I'll break down and turn my air conditioning on. If it stays in the 80s, it will probably be soon. The new apartment will be nicer in that regard; 300 fewer square feet and it's all on one floor. My bedroom should be less of a sauna. I am excited to live on the third floor and have windows in my room as well; I only have the one window in my bathroom for now and it doesn't give me much airflow. I know; first world problems.

I need to start writing again; but I haven't been either happy or sad enough lately, and nobody wants to hear songs about how I can't write songs. It's just too meta.

A Pouring Out

2011-04-04T18:27:00.004-05:00

I keep meaning to blog, but I'm not very good at actually going through with it.

Truth is, I'm not doing anything exceptionally exciting or meaningful. I mean, yeah, I go to work - and I'm doing new things that are actually kind-of exciting - but I've gotten extremely complacent in my daily life to the point where I've spent entire days without leaving the house. It's somewhat unsettling.

I'm making progress, I hope. Last Sunday I threw caution to the wind and went with a coworker to the J Roddy Walston and the Business show downtown at King's. It was an awesome show - they are as energetic as performers as you'd expect from listening to their music. The venue is pleasantly small to boot, so there really aren't too many bad places to stand - the whole room sounds good. I keep trying to fit "rad" in as an adjective because that's really the way I would characterize the whole show: radical - straight from the 80s. My superlatives are lacking. I'm not very good with adjectives anymore, I think. It is sufficient to say that the show was excellent and well worth the lost sleep.

The concert was part of a goal in which I do my best to not "let work win." That is, I have found myself using my job as an excuse to not try new things. I want to not do that as much in the future.

I am currently trying to figure out how to best obliterate both my vacation days and my tax refund (mad props to the government for the tuition credit). I have a pair of weddings in the frozen north this summer - one in July and the other in August - for which I am pumped. I've never understood how to properly play the game of "inexpensive airfare", so I'm panicking slightly because I hate not having a plan laid out ahead of time (never mind the fact that I have at least a month before I really have to worry). Still, I imagine I'll get to get a bit more radiation pumped into my body in the name of security theatre and take to the skies in the interest of wishing my friends well in their marriages. I do love the interpersonal aspect of it all - seeing old friends and visiting old haunts - despite my tendency to complain.

I have also just today learned about the importance of health insurance: following the instructions of my dentist, I am soon to have a surgeon rend my wisdom teeth whence they are anchored. As it turns out, this procedure comes to a total of some $2700. It seems decidedly absurd, a stupidly large amount for the act of tearing a few misaligned nuggets of bone out of my head. The takeaway, though, is that apparently (and I have yet to confirm this with human resources) my dental insurance covers - per person per year - $1500. Total. No more. This, of course, adding in a routine dental cleaning - means I'm out nearly $925 for the privilege of having a surgeon manipulate several instruments of torture in such a manner as to extract my errant teeth. The truly absurd part here is surprisingly not the cost of care, but that my insurance functions exactly backwards. If I am hit by a truck, I have to pay some fixed cost in the thousands as my deductible and then my insurance company is on the hook for the rest - there is a maximum payout I must make per person per year. In this same accident, however, my dental insurer will pay out $1500 and I'm on the hook for the rest of everything. It has caused me to wonder why exactly I pay this company so much of my hard-earned dollars. Though I know I shouldn't complain - something is better than nothing at all.

I was trying to convince myself to get a new point and shoot camera for the slew of weddings coming up, but the apparent ineffectiveness of my dental plan and the possibility of another wedding-related trip have removed my ability to do so. It's likely a good move; I rarely use my point and shoot as is, though that may be because it chews through batteries with a swiftness unmatched be any other gadget in my stable. My D90 is not suit pocket friendly and might "cramp" my "style" on the "dance floor."

Lonely as I claim to be in the romance department, I am quite excited for these upcoming weddings. I need to remember to stop complaining so much.

I'm participating in something called an Experimonth. So far it has been quite intriguing and I am excited about the rest of the month's data. They provide graphs of my and others' data that seem to be updated in near-realtime. I do love graphs. Oh yes I do.

On Compulsions

2011-03-19T21:21:00.002-05:00

Well kids, it has certainly been a day.

As with any day on which I make a significant decision, I am decidedly flustered and in a state of needless worry as I attempt to fall asleep. It's not that I make reliably poor life decisions - I actually think I'm doing pretty ok with a few minor exceptions - it's just that I obsess to such a degree that I start to drive myself crazy. I picked out a new place to live today and, as much as I would like to say that I signed a lease (as I tweeted), it would be more accurate to say that I signed an application and a reservation sheet and forked over nearly $200 for application fees and reserving my supposed next apartment. Normally I would feel decidedly confident but last time I checked my credit score, it had dipped due to whatever criteria it is that makes credit scores dip. I don't really understand the alchemy of the whole thing, but apparently some people in some place who have never met me have decided that the number which represents me to potential lenders should, following the last month of financial transactions, be assigned a lower value. It truly does baffle me.

So, come June, I get to move again - this time using my own two arms. I've started looking around at my house in a panic, wondering where in the hell I managed to obtain so many things. I'm losing about 300 square feet, which more or less means one bedroom. I also, sadly, will have to sacrifice my acoustic drums, as I feel my neighbours-to-be would not appreciate the noise level. I am reluctant to get an electric set, but it seems to by my only course of action at this point. Mostly, I just don't want to spend the money. I also haven't figured out what to do with my beloved drums - do I keep them in storage or do I try to sell what I have? I feel like selling them would be silly, especially with the amount of money I've recently put into hardware, but it seems like it may be the best plan. I have until June to decide, but I'm sure I'll continue to obsess over the decision until then.

I should really view this as a means to downsize and simplify my life, but I never really think of anything that way. I never know what I'm going to need in the future, so getting rid of things for which I can deduce some likely future value is difficult. I have boxes for most any piece of electronics over $100 stowed in my closet; most of which I don't need. I just have so much... stuff.

I am rapidly losing my train of thought.

Whenever I play drums for church, I stop by McDonalds for breakfast. It is a guilty pleasure, my bacon and egg bagel, hash brown, and small orange juice. It is also likely contributing to my ever-increasing mass. I miss my infallible metabolism.

It is a bit strange to have the rest of my family in town; to have my parents in a space all my own, constructed and filled without their input. At the same time, though, it is utterly delightful. Sitting down to the table for the family dinner felt just like it used to: comforting and familiar. I do so enjoy having them here.

Time to rest. Tomorrow I predict my right arm will be numb and my right hand in great pain. I have apparently lost all of my drumming muscles in the few years in which I didn't play much. I am paying for this lack of practice now in a significant way.

Inconvenience

2011-03-13T20:12:00.005-05:00

I really want to be all moody and dark and mysterious for whatever reason.

I find the task of searching for a place to live more exhausting than nearly anything else. Despite only actually looking at one place today, I felt overwhelmed and frustrated almost immediately. I don't like having to compromise and budget and plan ahead. The thought of having to physically move again terrifies me. It's become less of a value proposition than originally intended; it's now become all about convenience and time savings.

I keep thinking I'm going to suddenly return to writing decently. I never factor in the self-imposed lack of excitement in my life. I don't know if excitement is necessary, but conflict certainly helps. Conflict about things more serious than housing choices, anyhow. I also lack motivation for, well, anything, but that seems like it is a different problem. They're likely related.

I seem to have done something horrible to my thumb by compulsively cracking it. I have this whole pile of easily-solved problems that I would much rather complain about ad nauseum. Woe is me, I have ample resources to solve all of my problems if I were able to muster the motivation. Which, I suppose, is to say that I have a whole hill of easily-solved problems and one near-impossible task on which they are queuing.

I am, without a doubt, the largest inconvenience to myself.

I hate Sunday nights. Every time 9pm on a Sunday rolls around, I feel a sudden regret for all the things I could have done but didn't. I might consider killing someone if it meant I could work four tens rather than five eights. I can't fathom why, in a nation so supposedly advance as the US of A, companies hate their employees to such a degree. Other, more civilized places (ones where people can get healed from a sickness without losing their homes) afford their workers minimum amounts of vacation - appreciable amounts, even. There are only two things that really prevent me from moving to Europe, or even the frozen dreamland that is Canada - I don't know the language and everyone I love is here.

I mean, for fuck's sake, even China (11 days) has more mandated vacation time than the US (none). It explains a lot about our culture, where hating your job is in vogue. I'll have to work in one place for five years before I get another five days of vacation. I'd love to see the world while I'm young, but there really isn't any way for me to have both the time and the disposable income to do it here. Germany gets 20 days minimum; the UK 28. Then again, the US government - on all levels - seems to show nothing but disdain for the common worker, so I can't say I'm surprised by the poor state of things. Also, I'd like to see healthcare get taken care of before we move on to vacation time - I can work a little harder if it means all of us can get some decent healthcare.

I should just learn to stop complaining.

Statistics

2011-03-08T18:35:00.004-06:00

One of the most difficult things I have been trying to teach myself in this, a self-proclaimed period of attempted self-improvement, is that nobody - at least statistically - cares about me.

I don't mean to use the phrase with the acquired meaning they they dislike me, but I merely mean to say that nearly one-hundred percent of the world's population gives me no mind. I know, academically, that nobody else bothers to process my actions to the extreme extent that I do. I remember the most absurd things that, really, I shouldn't. Of course, now that I've started trying to think about them, I can't remember a damn thing. The moral of the story is that, while I am perfectly aware that nobody cares about my actions, I cannot seem to stop over-analyzing things I do and have done.

This minor obsession, egotistical as it might be, has been flaring up the last week as I have been performing something of an experiment with my driving. Rather than keeping up with the pace of traffic and blasting down 440 at 75mph every morning and afternoon, I have been relegating myself to a mere 5 miles per hour over the posted limit and making good use of my cruise control. Though I need more samples to call it a true experiment, the initial results are promising: my gas mileage jumped about 2.4mpg from an average tank of gas - up to 34.8 from an average of 32.4. I am guessing that my insistence on driving slower (or, more accurately, less quickly) will do a fair bit towards raising my average. In driving slowly, I continually fear that I will upset other people choosing to drive more quickly. I can sit in my car, perfectly aware of the fact that exactly zero of these other drivers will remember either me or my slightly slower rate of speed 5 minutes from now, yet I still feel some anxiety.

I do the same thing with countless social situations. It contributes to my lack of an adventurous spirit - for whatever reason, I have a crippling fear that people will remember me, that I will somehow offend someone to such a degree that they will remember who I am and how terrible a person I am.

Nobody cares (but me).

Reading

2011-02-26T22:11:00.004-06:00

It has been well over a month since last we spoke. I still owe you a nook review. I have a great many things queued up, but I haven't been making the time for the ones that seem like they will require effort. I almost didn't run my errands today in favour of sitting in my room watching old episodes of Top Gear. Fortunately, my hair is now shorter, my car has fresh oil, and I have a Wake County library card. I was able to motivate myself for at least part of the day.

I wired up one of the old sets of speakers I have lying around, a pair of Technics SB-L50s that my dad handed down to me. I am now regretting my actions as a three-year-old, when I thought that the paper bubbles in the middle of the speaker cones looked like fun bits to toy with. Fortunately, the speakers still sound good. I haven't been able to come up with a way to use them as full-time replacements for my computer speakers - I'll need a new desk if I'm going to accommodate speakers this big alongside my displays - but they work nicely

for bouncing sound around my room. They sound quite nice when compared to my inexpensive Logitech 2.1 setup, though I should have expected that. They're considerably more careful and - this is the best part - they are less grating with highs. I find that my head gets

tired when listening to high-frequency heavy audio with my Logitechs. I'm likely just being too picky.

Speaking of sound, I just got finished watching The Social Network with some friends. I encountered the first time I felt anything other than joy at my home theatre setup during the club scene: the bass was muddy and distorted, my sub's 6.5" driver couldn't really handle the lowest lows. Still, it's been an excellent setup for, well, everything else. I still dream of getting a larger sub and a set of floorstanding monitors (for listening to vinyl, of course), but it's hardly a pressing desire.

My efforts to make movie night a "thing" have been mildly successful thus far. I've made an effort to be the social planner for the change, even if it is just for my one event per week taking place at the same time and location. It's all part of a conspiracy to be more social. Somehow.

I've been doing a lot more reading since I got the nook. Some of the uptick is undo

ubtedly due to, well, piracy. Remember how easy it was to get music when Napster became

popular? All of a sudden there was a huge library of music to sample for free, so why not sample as much as you could? Everybody knows how to steal music now, and the industry has come around to the new model and is slowly figuring out how people want to spend money in this day and age. Book publishing is just like that, only we're in the Napster days all over again. Publishers are still overcharging and trying to build in DRM and generally make eBooks an unpleasant experience. And, as was done with music, pirates are stepping in and, at least for now, providing a superior system of distribution. For the sake of trying it, I bought a book from the Barnes&Noble store. It was, to say the least, annoying. I tried to make the purchase right from the device - as I figured most people would do. It kicked me back, saying that I hadn't entered a credit card - yet I had an ample amount of credit on my account from gift cards. I logged on to the B&N website (using a computer) and attempted to add address and credit card info. For whatever reason, the address submission form does not work in Chrome, so I had to reenter everything again in IE. Then, and only then, was I allowed to buy the book. Then I waited. And waited. Though it was only 10 minutes or so, the purchase took far too

long to appear on my nook. If I'm buying a book on the go, I want it now - not 10 minutes after

my flight has boarded and taken off. It was also very unclear which payment method was being used - whether my gift card balance was being used or whether I would see a charge on my credit card. The book did, however, eventually appear on my nook and the nook app on my phone. As best I can tell, position syncing between the two works well, though I have to remember to let my nook see WiFi before I try to read on my phone. It's a limitation of choosing the WiFi-only nook, but it's not a big deal since I do almost no reading on my phone whatsoever. Overall, the process was considerably more painful than it should have been, but now that my account is completely set up and validated, I am confident that future purchases will go much more smoothly.

The pricing of eBooks is still an issue, though. I paid $7.99 for an electronic copy of Patrick Lee's

Ghost Country. A paperback version was only $7.91. I'm no expert, but copying a file over the internet should cost significantly less than making shipping a copy made of dead trees. Sure, the author and publisher need to get paid - but there is no reason whatsoever that an electronic copy should cost more.

And with that, I am off to read.

On Vinyl

2011-01-22T18:30:00.002-06:00

I know, I know. Two posts in a day? Neither one is about anything interesting? Please accept my apologies in advance.

I am, like a good little wannabe hipster, listening to a record right now. Not a "record" like the kids these days use it, but a literal 12" diameter circle of vinyl. Analog audio. I am fully aware of the irony involved with insisting on analog reproductions - it is safe to assume anything recorded today is done digitally. So I get that 96khz lossless something pressed to a vinyl disc and I play it... with a $70 turntable with a low-end needle, an included-with-the-price phono preamp, a 7.1 receiver, and decidedly tiny satellite speakers. I could probably improve the sound reproduction if I broke out my headphones, but even then they're only midrange 40mm drivers - not exactly capable of distinguishing between high-bitrate AAC and vinyl.

So why, despite my clear knowledge of the situation, did I pick up a turntable? Honestly, I don't know. Part of it is the novelty. How many people under 40 do you know who have a working (an important clarification) turntable? Exactly. It's a throwback to the "good old days" and adds a dash of class. The other part of it is nostalgia. I remember sitting and listening to records with my dad back when we had a great big silver Technics deck in the TV cabinet. As I got older, I would raid his collection from time to time and chill out on the family room floor with headphones on listening to Huey Lewis and the News. I bought a few albums a few years ago - a pair of Moody Blues records from a thrift store - but I couldn't tell you where they are now.

I have only one record - Punchline's Delightfully Pleased - because it seemed like an interesting thing. It is a rad record to be sure, but it makes me think I should start expanding my collection - and fast. It's hard to justify, though, because it means re-purchasing much of my music. Sure, I love Bright Eyes and Fun and The Format and Motion City Soundtrack, but do I really want to pay for all their albums a second time? It seems wasteful.

I've started buying a bulk of my music from Amazon's mp3 store. Actually, I could rephrase that: I've started buying a bulk of my music. It's something I always said I would do when I got out of college, lumped in with things like "exercise" and "learn a foreign language" except that I've actually followed through with it.

Hold up, side one is over. Time to flip.

It feels strange to pay for music, or at least it did for the first few months out of school. It was so much cheaper to hop on over to the seedy underbelly of the Internet and grab a torrent. Plus, I was able to rationalize the piracy and feel just fine with myself. Lately, though, I've found that it feels much better - and more importantly is far more convenient - to pay for it at Amazon. I've started impulse-buying the $3 and $5 albums on my phone because I can have them immediately. The Amazon mp3 store on Android is surprisingly enjoyable to use. Similarly on my desktop, the songs download quickly and are always tagged correctly with album art and everything. There aren't any quality or ripping issues; no static or skipping. No hunting down a good torrent and making sure there are seeds and waiting for it to finish. This legal music thing, it's going to catch on.

Anyhow, before I went on this tangent, I was thinking about paying for music twice. I don't like it. The solution, to me, is what I've already seen some bands do: include a coupon / code for a digital download of the album when you buy it on vinyl. It is trivial to rip a CD in this day and age, so if you're buying those I don't feel it is necessary, but ripping a record is considerably more difficult. I don't like that idea that I should buy the CD / download on the album's release date and then, months later, buy the vinyl copy because it is somehow special. I would be incredibly happy to pay $15-$20 on the release day for (a) an immediate digital download and (b) a physical copy on vinyl, shipped using the usual methods. It's a win-win situation, really. Of course, nobody in a position to fix things will agree with me. This is all leading to a copyright discussion that I don't really want to have right now.

I've seen a resurgence in vinyl lately - people seem to be more interested in buying records and bands seem to be more interested in selling them. I'm hoping that physical vinyl copies fit into the future of the music industry.

Bayonetta

2011-01-22T13:59:00.002-06:00

It seems like blogging has come back into vogue these past few months. Either that or I've just been paying more attention to those around me who blog.

I've been experimenting with using my phone as a video and voice recorder in the car. It turns out that the car dock for the Nexus 1 allows me to use the phone as a pretty decent dash camera and, so long as I promise not to sing, I could make some decent "watch me drive and talk about things" video blogs. I'm not sure the idea would go over well with all three faithful readers. Nobody really wants to watch 20 minutes a day of me shouting at cars. Editing it down would be time-consuming. Still, it's an interesting proof-of-concept.

I've been playing Bayonetta for the past few weeks. It is one of the most fun games I've played in a long time. Sure, it was wacky and occasionally confusing and full of fan service, but it was a blast to play. After I realized that the game didn't really care so much if I died the stress melted away. Bayonetta's designers are - among other things - incredibly skilled at placing quicksave points in long fights. I never once got even close to tossing my controller across the room despite not being very good at the game. Even though it may not be frustrating, don't underestimate the difficulty. I started playing on 'normal' and after 6 stages I realized that dying at least once for every battle was a bit wasteful, so I dropped down to 'easy'. Bayonetta has an interesting feature on the easy and very easy difficulties - an item that turns the game into several hours of "press x to win." Automatic mode sucked all the fun out of the game for me, but I was able to play on easy without automatic and it suited me just fine. It wasn't until after I finished my playthrough that I learned it was possible to replay levels and rack up more halos. I imagine I'll continue to play it from time to time, as the levels are quite entertaining and I wouldn't mind upgrading some of my stone trophies.

I paused mid-review to eat lunch, so forgive the sudden change of tone.

I've been playing a lot more video games that aren't shooters or RPGs now that I'm not locked to the PC. Honestly, the PS3 just seems lower stress than my desktop. Maybe it has something to do with spending the whole day in front of a computer. Who knows

What Happens in (New) Vegas...

2011-01-04T21:00:00.003-06:00

Fallout: New Vegas is stressing me the hell out. Seriously. Up until the last few hours of play, it was, well, roughly identical to Fallout 3. All this faction stuff, though, it's scrambling my brain. I'm a thorough type of person when it comes to RPGs. I like to complete all the quests that I am given in an area before moving on. I like the order to it all, the ability to see the whole of the game and to experience each area's storylines. New Vegas is ruining that, making me run between quests for different people who hate each other and will kill me if I help their enemies. I feel like I'm running blind since I have no idea who is in cahoots with who, and who I might inadvertently be helping by completing a quest. The game's generous helping of quest bugs don't help at all, with certain quest elements not spawning and the game occasionally forgetting what quests I've done in the past. It is frustrating to say the least. It's become evident that pleasing even one major faction is going to be damn near impossible, and in doing so I am basically forced to abandon any prior allegiances. But really, it's too late in the game for me to go kiss and make up with the Legion, so I don't really have a choice in the matter if I'm going to finish the storyline. I'm stuck following the NCR to the grave whether I agree with them or not. Sure, the Boomers and Goodsprings still love me, but I'm being forced to turn my back on other groups that, well, I rather like.

It has been exceptionally difficult to return to work. Not because of anything bad, but apparently I become borderline nocturnal when I don't have to wake up for a few weeks. Waking up at 6am has been a bit of a struggle, as has getting to bed by 10.

I was all fired up about NV and ready to rant and rant about everything, but now that it's down on the screen, I'm feeling exhausted. Goodnight.

Ultraportable

2011-01-01T23:48:00.002-06:00

This whole having an ultraportable computer business is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it is obliterating my bedtimes by making it possible for me to surf and/or write in bed. On the other, it is encouraging me to write more because, well, I can write from bed.

It's a new year and I feel like, this being my first year out of school and all that, I should do something with it. Of course, my track record for actually making good on my plans is extremely poor, so I wouldn't expect much. I started looking again at admission requirements for NCSU's masters programs, fully aware that it will be painful to have to be an academic again. Still, applying would be a step towards actually doing something I've been threatening for months now, and as such I feel like it would be beneficial.

I should probably make a seperate blog for my Cr-48 / ChromeOS thoughts, as the people who might care about those things do not want to know about my life, and those of you who want to know about my life do not care about some esoteric piece of technology. I'll work on that... later.

Waking up for work on Monday is going to be a whole new kind of painful.

ChromeOS: Day 1

2010-12-30T23:36:00.008-06:00

Checking in after my first full day of using ChromeOS. It has been, well, disappointing.

Edit: Take this all with a grain of salt. I figured out the workaround for my wifi issues just after posting. According to a Google support thread, ChromeOS (and/or the underlying *nix kernel) has issues with WPA+TKIP. I switched my router from WPA+TKIP to WPA+AES and watched as the Cr-48 changed instantly from a slow, laggy brick into a quick, snappy beast. This, I suppose, points out another problem: the lack of documentation. I read through the "known issues" page of the bug tracker and didn't see anything like this. It is likely that I may be blind and/or incompetent, though, so I'd be happy to be proved wrong here.

The biggest blow to my enthusiasm came from Google Talk which, after tempting me to try out video chat, proceeded to crash and refuse to connect. Actually, the notebook has been consistently slow with its network connection, leading nearly everything to have trouble. It's been taking upwards of five minutes to load simple webpages like reddit's front page, and more complex things like Gmail and Google Voice have been downright unusable because of the lag. It took more than 2 minutes to post a comment on a Facebook status. To make matters worse, the whole system seems to lock up when pages are loading, which means I can't even work with the things I have open. Even now, Blogger is having issues connecting to save this post. It's not constant, but there are enough issues to give me pause.

The fact that ChromeOS is struggling at doing tasks for which it was expressly designed, namely loading web pages and chatting, is both frustrating and a cause for great concern. The user experience crashes and burns quite often, with multitouch gestures simply not working and clicks being completely ignored. Seeming at random, two-finger scrolling with abruptly stop working. Clicks are apparently queued up, because clicking multiple times on a nonresponsive page yields a flurry of tabs opening once the page starts responding again.

I have been trying to load speedtest.net since I started typing this. It still has not finished. A page of comments on reddit required three refreshes before it loaded correctly. Google Talk still refuses to connect. Tweetdeck's Chrome app is incredibly slow and takes upwards of five minutes to load completely - that is, if it decides to load at all.

I've checked my network. Other wifi devices are just fine. My desktop, using a wired connection, load all of these pages just fine. It's not the connection. Maybe there is something screwy with the Cr-48's network stack or drivers. I find it hard to believe that I'm bumping into hardware limitations: a single-core Atom N455 with 2GB of RAM should not be choking on a few tabs of Chrome. I hope, however, that the performance troubles are all in software and that they can be fixed soon. ChromeOS is in no way marketable in its current form.

It isn't all bad, though. The hardware has continued to impress me, especially with battery life: this morning, upon unplugging the charger, I was showing a bit over 7:30 of battery life - an incredible figure for such a small battery, but after using the Cr-48 for the day (from noon to midnight) on and off, I was throughly impressed with its stamina. One of the most impressive things about ChromeOS is the speed with which it wakes from sleeping. It usually takes me longer to open the notebok and place my hands on the keyboard than it takes for the system to resume. Even rebooting takes less than 30 seconds from on-to-off-to-on again. It is most impressive.

In non-ChromeOS news, I finally broke down and picked up a PS3 Slim today after lusting after one for years now. I played GT5 and LittleBigPlanet for most of the day, marveling at the glorious graphics. Having a housemate, I thought it wise to pick up a second controller and also ended up getting the Blu-ray remote since I do so despise my noisy $20 DVD player. I'm never going to finish New Vegas at this rate.

Speedtest.net still hasn't loaded.

Chrome

2010-12-30T02:17:00.003-06:00

I should have something profound to say about my first excursion back to my childhood home after 6 months of living in the so-called real world. I am sure I would have some deep, brooding thoughts brought on by delayed flights and sharing a single bathroom with four other people for nine days except that, upon my arrival home this... morning at 2am, there was a nondescript box sitting peacefully on my doorstep.

I had not ordered anything, you see, so I really had no idea what it was. Well, I did have an idea, but it was a long shot and I didn't want to get my hopes up. Google, however, decided to send my a glorious little Cr-48 to beta-test ChromeOS and its hardware. The excitement for this new toy sort-of blew away anything else I might have been feeling for the time being. New electronics! Some of the best industrial design I've ever had the pleasure of owning! New and exciting technologies that may-or-may-not prove to be important. I love living on the cutting edge.

Of course, with everything that's happened in the last 24 hours, I have to think I'm going to get run over by a bus. Neither flight was canceled though both were delayed, but even then the flight from Chicago wasn't delayed so far that I missed my connection in New York. All the checked bags made it through the trip unscathed, and the trip home was simple enough (albeit decidedly expensive). And, after a day of excellent travel-luck, I got this. I think I may hide away for fear of the inevitable bad that will soon enter my life,

This keyboard will take a bit of getting used to. My biggest gripe is the lack of an 'end' key, something I tend to use somewhat regularly when writing. The chicklet-style keys are strange to type on for now after years of conditioning to the long stroke of mechanical and membrane keys, and the comparatively long stroke of scissor keys. The spacing is lovely, it's just a matter of learning the little quirks.

I'm not a fan of the trackpad at the moment. It is gigantic and offset to the right side of the palmrest. As a result, I keep accidentally bumping it with my right hand while typing and causing the cursor to freak out. I also need to learn not to rest my hand on the trackpad while attempting to mouse, but that will come with time. The pad requires quite a bit of force to click, but tap-to-click is an option and I like it better that way. Multitouch seems nice and responsive, though I am mourning the loss of a middle-click - a vital action for my Chrome workflow.

I really should be sleeping as I have to wake up tomorrow and shop to prepare for a New Year's Eve party. I also have to return to the working world come Monday, and I fear that readjusting to that sleep schedule will be... painful to say the least.

I'm sure I'll continue to review the Cr-48. Hell, it's giving me a chance to live out my fantasy of being a technology journalist - of course I'm going to write about it.

Sponge

2010-12-06T18:29:00.002-06:00

I am more convinced every day that my drive home is slowly eating my creativity. Not eating it, I suppose, just... absorbing it like a sponge with no intent to return it. Have you ever tried to wring ideas out of a car? Cars are decidedly difficult to twist, making it near impossible to wring them properly. Plus, I sort-of really like my car.

I keep thinking of snippets of songs in my mind. I'm trying to project this front of being somewhat stoic and independent, though, so their less-then-positive nature tends to make me shy away from them.

The worst part of winter is cold fingers. It makes it difficult to type with the speed and accuracy I normally enjoy. My lab at work (it is, in fact, only mine in my mind) is also cold despite being next to the other lab which is nice and toasty. I need magic gloves that don't affect my hands in any way other than to increase their temperature. Supposedly using infrared heating bulbs is an excellent way to keep hands warm in the winter. I have not tested this theory yet since I feel like I have been ordering far, far too many things lately. Work is going to start looking at me in a disapproving manner if I don't stop getting packages. In my defense, I really wanted a new computer.

I beat Batman: Arkham Asylum and went back through to find all the extras. I haven't played with the challenges much yet; the Xbox 360 controller lacks an internal heater to give me the necessary dexterity in the cold. I can say that Arkham Asylum is an incredible game, even now at a little over a year old. It is graphically impressive without being too intensive (my old machine ran it just fine at 1920x1200) and the fighting system is the best I've ever played. The story, both the main plot and the hidden extras, was engaging and compelling. I am throughly intrigued by Harley Quinn's character now, and I am excited for the sequel to launch so I can discover more. Truly an excellent game.

Speaking of games, Fallout: New Vegas finally runs at 1920x1200 with everything set on high. I haven't tried ultra yet, but I might be able to do it. I have had a hard time transitioning back into Fallout after my hiatus, finding it difficult to remember not to shoot everyone on sight. To its credit, New Vegas does allow you to kill just about anyone, putting you in a considerably more believable world, but using a bullet to the face as a greeting also means that I keep missing out on side quests. When I can manage to not murder people, I am enjoying the game. Getting rid of the occasional graphical stuttering has helped with immersion in a big way, allowing me to get back into Fallout mode in my mind. I still haven't gotten a house, which is proving to be a pain in the ass. I certainly had a home in Megaton/Tenpenny Towers by this point in Fallout 3. I need somewhere to store all of the stuff I've collected. I can't carry all these stolen pre-war books with me all the time.

So, new computer. I decided it was time. Actually, Newegg decided. I like to keep an up-to-date wishlist on Newegg even when I'm not in the market just so I can keep my computer-component-choosing-chops up. When Newegg's Black Friday newsletter showed up on my phone, though, I realized that every component except the processor was on sale, netting me somewhere in the area of $200 in savings (in 8-10 weeks to allow for rebates). I'm calling it a good deal.

In buying and building my new machine I had a realization. People always tell you to do what you love and follow that for work. Love before money or something like that. I'm abusing these phrases. The point is, I haven't changed what I am passionate about: I love gadgets. I don't care what type of gadget or what it does, if it is shiny and electronic, I love it. For now, I work making gadgets in a way. I'm still holding onto the dream that I will, one day be able to follow gadgets to a place where I can play with them and write about them. Maybe someday. Don't get me wrong - I like the engineering aspect. I'm learning about the guts of everything and how the corporate world works. The real-life gadget mill is a lot different from the way it existed in my mind. I just have no interest in management. Bah, who knows.

I keep thinking about cars. It needs to stop because I can't buy one for several years. Maybe by then Mazda will restyle the Miata into something less jellybean-like and more angular and edgy. Or maybe Ford will hear my pleas and turn the Miata platform into (a) a sportier reincarnation of the Probe or (b) a sportier reincarnation of the Mercury Capri. Or both, that's an option. Something to combat the Pontiac Solstice (even though we all know that the Saturn Sky was way hotter). Of course, in 5-7 years my life could be vastly different and I'll be looking at more family-friendly fare.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T23:31:00.004-06:00

So, here I am, just like I was in high school only different. Listening to Transatlanticism through headphones after midnight, lit only by the glow of my monitors. I'm different now, or so I like think. I'll leave that analysis to those around me.

Today was my first (that I know of) Thanksgiving away from home, and it was largely as I expected. I don't get excited about holidays, it's just not something that I do. Sure, I like eating big meals and getting presents, but more than that, I get excited because everybody around me is excited. Were I completely on my own, I would likely forget about holidays altogether, not due to distaste but to negligence. Holidays are marked largely by getting a paid holiday, just as they were once days with no class. Alleigh decorated for the fall season with some garland strung along the stairway and across the mantle, which is nice. But again, it's not something I ever would have thought to do. My decoration style can be described most accurately as "efficient." I don't like a lot of things in my way, though looking at my desk may lead you to believe otherwise. Inasmuch as I dislike clutter and unnecessary things in my decor, I am also decidedly lazy when it comes to cleaning and organization. I'm not sure how I got on the subject of interior decorating. Long story short, the focus of my living room is the TV; the center of my bedroom is the bed and/or computer, and nothing else in either room is all that important to me.

I've been playing a lot more video games lately. Mostly Guild Wars, actually, which is strange. I guess I just needed a break... of a few years. I should be playing Fallout: New Vegas, but for whatever reason I'm not. I keep telling myself it's because my current machine isn't doing the best job at keeping the graphics pretty, but really, I just haven't played enough to let it get its hooks in me like Fallout 3 did. I know I'll enjoy it, it's just a matter of being able to devote the time to getting truly immersed in the universe. A new computer couldn't hurt, though. I never did finish Bioshock 2 because it is so damn boring. I got the a point where I realized that I didn't even care about the story anymore. The gameplay is annoying and repetitive, the characters lack character, and the game as a whole is like the awful level in Bioshock where you played as a Big Daddy except stretched out to a full-length game. I should go back and finish it, but I just don't want to. I also never finished Mirror's Edge. I ragequit after failing the stairway level for the hundredth time. Mirror's Edge is an incredible game based on a fresh idea that was implemented well - except for the levels where they pit you against hordes of armed men and don't give you any effective way to fight back. Never (with the exception of Braid) have I been more frustrated with a video game. And then today I picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum because it was 66% off on Steam. These holiday sales are too tempting. If I was any good at games, it might be dangerous.

Work is work. I go and do things and come home at the end of the day. I'm starting to actually get into some more interesting work, and I enjoy it. I also like answering to customers, especially when they are engineers. While I am capable of communicating effectively with non-engineers, it is incredibly helpful to have competent people on the other end of the phone.

Honestly, I haven't been doing much lately. Lots of TV and video games and hanging out with church folks. I've been doing a bit more digging around my car project plans, and I've learned a great deal about CAN at work from asking folks what they know. I'm still working my way through The Machine of Death, savouring every story as I read along. It is truly an incredible book. You should read it.

I'm sure that there are more things that I should have thought to write, but I am yawning with come regularity now, and that means I should sleep.

Project Idea: Dashboard Tablet

2010-11-06T10:38:00.003-05:00

I have this crazy idea that I want to put a Galaxy Tab (or equivalent) in my dashboard. I've been mulling it over and trying to figure it out as best I can.

For reference, I drive a 2008 Ford Focus.

I'd have to replace the center section of the dash with a double DIN piece which, as I have learned, are readily available. The factory stereo has unique cutouts, and rather than mutilate that piece, I'd rather leave it intact in the event that I want to sell the car. The Galaxy Tab is a bit larger than a Double-DIN opening, though, so I would have to do some cutting to make a big enough hole. Ideally, I could mold (or have molded) a section of plastic that would snap into the resized hole in the dash. Essentially, I want a landscape-oriented dock for the tablet, complete with audio and USB connections. I would snap the tablet into its dock and have it serve as controls for the radio, a media source, possibly a navigation unit (wifi tethering, of course), and a performance monitor.

The radio controls would be abstracted using a microcontroller or some sort. The wiring diagrams I've found so far note that some of the radio signals make use of CAN, which limits my MCU choices to more powerful chips - I was hoping to get away with using an MSP430, as I don't expect to need too much processing power. The most difficult part about the abstraction layer is figuring out how the radio talks to itself. I may get a simple radio and amp so that I can tear it apart and not feel bad - I'd like to keep the stock radio in one piece. Plus, something simple is likely to be smaller and more easily stowed elsewhere in the event that I run out of room in the dash.

The performance monitoring is a less-complicated but still nontrivial section. Bluetooth OBD-II readers exist in abundance, so getting the signals to the tablet isn't a problem, but the lack of and Android-based applications for interpreting the OBD-II data means that I would have to write it from scratch.

The factory radio has a screen mounted at the top of the dash. It is a little dot-matrix-ish LCD that communicates with the radio and, on more premium models, the HVAC system. Deciphering the protocol used to send it data could prove very useful, allowing me to control it from the MCU and display nearly anything I want.

I replaced the steering wheel in my car as a means to get cruse control working. On the new wheel, there are a set of radio buttons that, on higher-end models, control various functions on the radio. In my car, however, they simply light up and do nothing when pressed. Since there don't seem to be any extra wires, I am assuming that they, too, send signals to the radio using a CAN. This (in theory) should make it easy enough to have them communicate with the MCU and function as desired.

The presence of a CD player is the only thing I haven't really worked out. The tablet will take up most of the dash space (I still haven't quite figured out where it will fit), and as such, there will be little to no room for a CD player. I haven't decided if this is a problem. I will be keeping the factory aux-in jack in the console and (presumably) connecting it to an alternate head unit. I may have to mux the aux input, though, as the tablet will also be connected using a 3.5mm jack. Ideally, I could find a head unit with multiple aux-in ports.

There are a great many unknowns at this point, not the least of which is concerns about connecting the tablet to the MCU. USB would be ideal, but I don't know if the Galaxy Tab has USB Host functionality - nobody on the internet can seem to agree. Bluetooth is an option, but it will be more expensive, and I don't know how limited Android's Bluetooth stack is.

It will be a bunch of hardware design and a ton of software design. Both will likely prove to be good for my development as an engineer.

Thoughts on The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

2010-11-01T20:25:00.000-05:00

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was incredible.

I have never in my life seen so many people all trying to get to the same place - and being so polite about it. Sure, in the 40-minute line to get a ticket at the Dunn-Loring metro station in VA there was a guy who was extremely upset about having gotten train tickets. I don't think I'll ever understand that. The trains, similarly, were packed beyond belief. Our station was the second-to-furthest from the city on the Orange line east and we still barely had room to breathe on the train. A 40-or-so minute ride into the city took us past the other stations, each with people lined up five and six deep along the entire length of the platform headed into the city. We waved to people from inside the train - those of us that still had room to move our hands. Along the way, the train was delayed due to a further ahead train getting stalled because it had too many passengers. The train emptied out at Smithsonian - heaven help anybody who wanted to get off sooner or later. Hundreds of people climbed the escalators (almost all of which were broken) out into the sunlight on the National Mall.

Despite the rapidly-forming crowd, we took a nice walk down to the opposite end of the mall to visit the Lincoln Memorial, then headed back amongst more and more ralliers headed for the stage. When it all began at noon, I was stuck just in front of the news trailers and just behind the family reunification tent. From this location, none of us could see anything, and at the beginning, we could barely hear. The volume was reconciled quickly, though, so I was able to follow along with the rally by sound. Occasionally, I was able to see the top half of one of the giant screens for a few seconds, enough to catch a glimpse of the giant paper-mache Colbert puppet and little else. Still, despite the lack of personal space, my inability to see the stage, and the constant sand raining down on us, the Rally was incredible. (The sand, I feel, I must explain: between us and the news vans, there were exhaust vents from the subway, surrounded with sandbags to prevent people from blocking them. Some people decided to stand on these sandbags, thus breaking them open and showering people with sand every time they shifted. They must have been on the side of fear, because they were by no means sane and reasonable.)

Stewart's closing speech - the one serious moment of the Rally - was excellent. There were some lines that resonated with me - especially the statement that, "If everything is amplified, we can hear nothing." I am looking forward to getting home from work tonight so I can watch the Rally and see what actually happened on stage to go along with the audio track I heard.

Despite the trains and the sand and not being able to see, I was immeasurably pleased to be present for this event. It felt less like being apathetic at home and more like actually exerting effort to maybe help fix some things. At least to be counted among those hundreds of thousands who attended to beg for a bit of rationality to return to the political discourse in our fair nation.

After the rally, I stepped into what may go down in history as the largest Reddit meetup. I swapped QR codes with strangers who, after short conversations, were no longer strangers. I got my Rally shirt, I mingled with the crowd, and I got a glimpse of the Reddit admins, internet superheroes in our crowd. Everybody from Reddit was friendly and excited to be there. We braved the Metro one more time in an effort to make it to Dupont Circle for the afterparty, but an at-capacity bar combined with standing up since 9am led to me throwing in the towel and grabbing some dinner elsewhere, though the restaurant was still chock-full of Redditors.

The Rally was incredible. It was my first foray into political activism. It was the social event of the year. I was impulsive and social. I left my comfort zone far, far, far behind. I don't regret a second of it.

Driving

2010-10-28T20:23:00.003-05:00

I'm seriously contemplating putting a video camera in my car and recording my drive home. You missed so much this past week, not the least of which was a somewhat in-depth review of the first 27 minutes of the latest Taylor Swift album.

I flashed the radio on my phone and thought about that on the way home. It was a bit heart-stopping for a bit when it acted like a boot loop was imminent, but now I have a happy phone with a newer radio firmware and somewhat quicker data speeds.

The Rally is this weekend. I am hoping that it will be as incredible as I want it to be. It feels strange to have been there since the beginning, watching the opening post on Reddit become this massive thing that it really, truly happening. And I helped (you're welcome to help as well).

The Machine of Death is incredible. I can't stop reading it much to the detriment of my bedtimes.

Fallout: New Vegas has been a mixed bag. It is extremely crashy. It is also extremely enjoyable. I picked up an HD6870 with the intent of running it at a higher resolution than the 1200x800 my 8800GTS could handle. It's now drastically CPU limited at 1680x1050. It'd be nice if my Q6600 would let me overclock some, but it, too, has been extremely crashy lately, so it stays at a paltry 2.4GHz. A new computer is not in the cards for some time, sadly. I should put a new case on that list, though, since the 6870 barely fits in my smallish case. When I say barely, I mean that there is less than 1cm

I'm contemplating taking another crack at NaNoWriMo. I'm thinking it may help me get back into the spirit of writing, but who knows. I don't really have an idea for a story.

Negligible.

2010-10-19T20:27:00.003-05:00

I've come to the conclusion that my blogging has slowed so severely due to my now-regular isolation on the drive home. I have time to decompress and think (and occasionally talk) through my day. All my sticky feelings get sucked out the window at 70 miles per hour on 440.

But, as a result, I don't write much. I thought about that, too. I write when I am sad, when I am depressed, when I am angry and upset. I have been, for the most part, neutral these past few months. There have been highs and lows, but, smoothed out and accounting for error, I have felt decidedly emotionless. It is unsettling.

I have renewed my fervor in the hunt for a suitable set of IEMs, and I am still drawing blanks. I have a few quotes from audiologists that put a set of custom tips at $150 or so and, coupled with a ~$150 set of IEMs, it seems like too much. At least, too much for what I'd be getting. So I have moved up and out with my plans, now investigating getting a set of customs made straight up rather than attaching a universal set to custom tips. Of course, with this upgrade in product comes an uptick in price. Perhaps someday.

I've been consuming a lot, as is to be expected. And I mean consuming in that I am buying - not that I am constantly eating. Though, to be fair, I still haven't managed to shed my... senior 15-20? My late-in-the-college-game weight gain does not have a clever nickname. "Stress-induced gut." Or something. I keep telling myself that I'm going to be more active. I may follow through eventually.

With negligible feelings come forgettable events. I have nothing exciting to bring you.

Unwilling Update

2010-09-19T20:16:00.003-05:00

I don't feel like writing, but it's been nearly a month since we last spoke and I feel like I owe you something.

Things have been eventful; I just haven't figured out how to motivate myself. The end of August... I don't remember what was going on then.

I've been working. It has been nice. I'm making progress on not being such a lazy-ass. It is going as well as can be expected. Tomorrow morning will mark my push to wake up at 6am once more. See, I had to get used to getting up at 6.30 with the help of 2 alarms (one stationed across the room), and now that that is going well, I am pushing it back a notch. My sleep schedule is not the most exciting thing I have done since August.

I bought a TV, a receiver, speakers, a glass and steel stand, and more cables than I care to recount. Also, a Roku HD for good measure. It is a glorious setup, and it is cause for much celebration. It is also cause for significant credit card bills, however that is to be expected.

I went to Virginia Tech for a few days for a recruiting trip. I helped man our booth at the career fair and spent all of Wednesday interviewing kids for internships and full-time positions. It was curious, to be on the other side of the interviewing table. I didn't feel quite qualified to be asking questions of these people, essentially my peers. I managed to get the hang of it, however, and I hope that HR will gain some use from the notes I took.

We get a whole week of casual dress this week. Upon hearing this news on Friday, I got excited. Then, upon realizing that I had gotten excited about being able to wear jeans and sneakers for a week, I felt sad. Ah, corporate America.

This post is awful. I don't want to be writing. It's just not working.

Derivation

2010-08-23T18:08:00.004-05:00

I had a strange thought today. I think the reason I can't create any derivative works is because I don't have my own style.

Lets step back for a moment. I've been having trouble with all kinds of derivative works for many months now. When I say "derivative works," I am to mean anything that I might produce that is based on something else. The easiest example is music. I keep wanting to make unique covers of songs in the footsteps of folks like Pomplamoose. I continue to fail miserably in this venture, though. It is disheartening. And music is not the only affected area, sadly. It seems to be applying to everything, including things at work. I'm having trouble writing good derivative code and documentation based on previous examples.

So, I can't derive. It is problematic. I had a thought, though. It seems to me that the reason I can't derive - the reason I can't take in ideas from the outside and mold them into my own unique solutions - is because I don't have my own style. I don't have any established musical style; I haven't ever felt comfortable with a system long enough to develop my own coding twists. I don't have a personal style. I am, I suppose, boring. Then I have to continue to wonder: is my lack of a strong style causing me problems with non-derivative creations as well? I feel unmotivated to write (music, prose, code, etc) because I cannot make it my own? It could be.

It makes sense, though. My attempts to derive end up looking like a bad version of the original with no flair, no twist, no personalization. I'm not sure how to fix this, actually, but I will be thinking about it. It may be the key to unlocking something about me. At the very least such internal investigation will not cause too much harm.

Also, I am quite sure I would be considerably more productive at work if I could work 4pm-midnight.

Feeble Attempts

2010-08-17T20:43:00.004-05:00

Look me in the eyes and tell me I'm not crazy

'cause if I hear it all again, maybe then

I can clear the sunshine from my head

and go back to bed

whisper in my ear that I'm almost what you wanted

the sweetest melody; guaranteed to leave me haunted

a promise to prepare, for every whim and care

a knot inside a string, a useless waste of things

(B - Bmaj7 - Amaj7 - G [F#])

Remind me to keep working on this, please.

Exhaustion

2010-08-16T20:11:00.004-05:00

It's been all of six days. I'm not sure I've done anything of worth, actually, but I feel like writing. I don't think I'm ready to step back into poetry, prose, or song quite yet, so you get narrative. And you will like it.

Today, although actually being Monday, has felt more like Tuesday since I spent yesterday working at the model shop tending to giant robots. This is, I assure you, a totally accurate description of my day yesterday. I got up at 6, went to Starbucks, then spent the rest of the day (until 5.30 at least) in a building watching over giant robots, taking care of their problems as they arose. It was a long and tiring day, but I'm hoping it was worth it. I don't really know what would make it worthwhile or not, which makes a determination of its worth compared to the lost weekend hours difficult if not impossible.

I'm not exactly thinking coherently at the moment. For as awake and energetic as I was Sunday morning at 6, I was back to being my usual teetering-on-the-edge-of-driving-not-being-a-safe-activity tired today. I did sleep in until noon on Saturday, though, so perhaps I just need to start getting eleven hours of sleep a night instead of my benchmark eight. Sleep is far too complex. I want a sleep bar whose level will increase and decrease to show me the amount of sleep I need to feel rested.

It feels strange to not be able to tell people what I am doing exactly. I've never really worked on anything of consequence before, and now there is encouragement to be vague. Curious.

I'm really trying to get back into playing music. I've made a habit of playing the drums for a bit after work; making an effort to burn some calories and get my heart rate up a little. My arms are a bit sore today after yesterday's failed attempt to keep up with RIOT! and today's lower-key-but-still-challenging play though of Singularity. I am by no means a competent drummer again, but I'm getting there. I managed to fix the bass drum pedal at least, so it works again.

I'd love to write a new song, but I haven't been able to think in music lately.

The Future

2010-08-10T20:19:00.004-05:00

Ready? I'm going to complain for a few sentences. Just skip to the other side.

I've been exhausted for a little over 2 weeks now. It started with a brilliant 5-day migraine and my first-ever sick day, and still, two weeks later, it's heads or tails whether I'll have a fever or not. I really just want to sleep most of the afternoon - but once I'm out of bed I'm doing awesome until about 1pm. Seriously, what is the deal here? I don't even know.

Anyhow. I gushed about things last time I posted, and by things I of course mean my phone. You all loved it. I know you did.

Sadly, I haven't done many exciting things. Really, even now, I don't have anything to say (that I'm allowed to say - ha!). I'm just trying to find an excuse to stay awake past 9pm in a misguided attempt to be less tired in the morning. Something about sleep patterns and sleeping too much. I have every reason to not be a doctor. Likely, my inabilities to (a) memorize things quickly and (b) read through long, boring lines of text would inhibit my skill at practicing medicine. Fortunately, these shortcomings are merely hurdles in software development and not roadblocks. Plus, I'm not so keen on blood in considerable volumes.

Work is going well. Apart from my aforementioned fatigue and the amount of time I manage to burn while waiting for other people to do things - a number which is, thankfully, falling rapidly - I am having a good time. I'm learning stuff and being allowed to explore my current project. I am making more friends as well, as evidenced by my extra-work-ular (what is the adult form of extracurricular?) activities with work folks. I dig it. This will only seem sad or creepy if somebody happens upon it randomly and was somehow involved. Who at work crawls blogspot.com in their free time? I certainly don't. Anymore.

I had a strange moment on Sunday (Sunday, what?) in which I realized that I really did, in fact, want to try at work. Not 'try' in the sense that I haven't been doing work until now; rather 'try' in the sense that I want to be noticed and do things that show I am a valuable person worth of responsibility and so forth. It was a strange feeling, especially since I've never really been anywhere long enough to hit this point (or fail to hit it). It's a nice feeling, albeit slightly unnerving as it implies a certain path for my future.

I've been thinking a lot about moving as of late, something that both seems like an awesome idea and makes me want to hide in a closet all at the same time. On one hand, I'd love to be closer to work and church and friends on the opposite end of Raleigh. My commute would decrease drastically; my fuel expenses would fall, and I could sleep later. 25 minutes was a deliciously short commute when I started. Now that it's been some floating-point number of weeks (I've stopped counting, but I know it isn't an integer), I have grown impatient with the time it takes me to drive 12 miles on 440. The real dream is to live in a 5-mile radius and get an electric motorcycle for the commute. I know, I have awesome dreams. In reality, I will probably shoot for a maximum of 8 miles and get a normal motorcycle since the savings don't really add up with an electric one. That said, I can't really start thinking about moving since my lease isn't up until July of next year. Also, there is no way I'm moving in the summer. I'll wait until November or something.

I don't like all this planning ahead business. I should sleep.

Nexus One, and an Update

2010-07-24T21:21:00.002-05:00

I have a bunch of stuff bouncing around in my head, none of it cohesive.

Most prominent is my new phone. In a moment of decisiveness and irresponsibility, I ordered a Nexus One a week ago. The combination of growing frustration with my CLIQ and the impending closure Google's online store for the Nexus One proved too tempting to avoid, so I placed my order Saturday afternoon and impatiently awaited my phone, which arrived on Tuesday. So far it has been incredible. Maybe it is just because my prior experience with Android was 1.5 on lacklustre hardware, but the N1 and Android 2.2 are an excellent paring. Everything is snappy and responsive - especially the soft keyboard - a nice change from the CLIQ's propensity for lag. Speaking of the keyboard, this is the device that's convinced me I don't need a hardware keyboard to retain typing speed and accuracy. I am still getting the hang of the finer points of Android's default text correction, but the stock keyboard has won my trust. The increase in screen size - from 3.1" on the CLIQ to a glorious 3.7" of AMOLED goodness on the N1 - is also a large factor in usability when it comes to text input. I haven't yet tried to use the N1 in direct sunlight - I'm usually inside or at work - but I haven't had any issues with the display getting washed out. The most difficult transition as far as hardware goes is the relocation of the lock/power button that wakes up the phone. The CLIQ had the button placed on the upper right side of the phone, falling right at my thumb when holding the phone with my right hand whereas the N1's wake button is on the the top left of the screen. Not a big deal, but something to get used to. I have found the capacitive buttons for back, menu, home, and search useful, though the activation area for each is slightly above the icon, making it a smidge more difficult to find the correct button. I haven't yet had trouble with keyboard presses being counted as button presses, but I have been favouring the landscape keyboard. The trackball seems somewhat superfluous, but I have found a few specific functions that make it useful. Most notably, the trackball is lit by an RGB LED, allowing it to blink different colours based on what notifications are present. Google Voice, for instance, causes it to light up green while Gmail has is shine white. It makes picking up information at a glance simple. My second important use of the trackball is to do fine text selection. If I mistype a letter or word in a message, it can be difficult to use the touchscreen to get back to the exact location to backspace and correct. The trackball allows me to touch close to the word and navigate carefully to the typo.

As a whole, the hardware is wonderful. The device itself is very solid, if not on the heavy side. It has a sort-of unibody feel, with a metal band that surrounds the screen and loops around to the back. The plastic sections are a halfway point between soft-touch plastic and the normal, harder plastics used on most phones. It isn't so soft that it feels like it will pick up dirt easily like my Motorola Q, but it has enough of a soft texture that I'm not worried about dropping it.

Android 2.2 is brilliant. I am sure it would feel less revolutionary and more evolutionary had I not come from 3 or 4 versions behind, but as it is, 2.2 is a solution for many of the issues I had with 1.5 while piling on the new features, such as deep Exchange sync. I also appreciate having access to everything in the app market, and getting to use the new app market. Also, and it may be a small detail, but the news and weather widget included with 2.2 is brilliant: I can pull up a graph of the day's predicted temperature and chance of rain with two taps from the homescreen.

So, in short, I love it. I am extremely sad that Google has decided to stop selling the Nexus One, as I feel it shows the true power of Android. When set free from the constant attempts to "improve" its interface, Android truly shines as an OS. Subtle but pleasant transitions are built in, and the interface is quite uniform across the OS as a whole. Contact syncing is also brilliant: all my Google contacts were pulled down to the phone, and when logging in to the Facebook app, I was asked if I wanted to sync (1) all Facebook contacts, (2) no Facebook contacts, or (3) only the Facebook contacts who were already in my address book. The result is an uncluttered contact list that has rich Facebook information about the contacts who match up with a Facebook friend. It is far, far better than Motorola's attempts at contact integration with Motoblur. Device search is another fantastic feature. No longer do I scroll through a list of contacts or apps. Rather, everything is searched by using the Google Search homescreen widget or hitting the search button. From the search dialogue I can select what type of data I want to search for (contacts, apps, web, etc) and start typing as it filters information. The result is a quick way to find anything on the phone, and it is terribly helpful.

My real regret at this point is that I did not buy the desktop dock when I got the phone. Now that the store is closed, I have no way to obtain a new dock, and if I decide it is worth it in the future, I'll have to hunt one down on eBay. The N1 has a clock mode, in which it changes its display to show the time in large numbers while showing any upcoming alarms and other pertinent information. The display dims while charging in this mode to allow the phone to serve as an alarm clock, and it works. The dock would, of course, make it a more effective clock by giving the phone a base to stand and charge on, but also by automatically switching into and out of clock mode when place into or removed from the dock.

And now I am all tuckered out, so you get a short synopsis of my other escapades. Work is going well, and this past week I really started to get some real work to do. It has been a blast, even moreso than sitting in my cube and reading Reddit half the day. I'm learning new things and getting to put them into practice right away, and I am helping make real progress. This next week I get to learn and port an app to C# which will certainly be an adventure, and the week after that I will finally start in on my first real project. I'm glad to have things to do, and the amount of variety and learning I have already experienced makes me feel even more confident that I made the right call by taking this job and moving down here.

As for a social life, things are going well. Alleigh and I made friends with some rad folks through our church, and they have been doing an excellent job of getting us out of the house on the weekends - a fact I appreciate. Friday night was spent playing board games with some of my coworkers, an excellent time marred only by the fact that I was the only single patron of said games night. Nevertheless, things are going well - surprisingly so considering my reclusive tendencies.

Android

2010-07-16T22:46:00.002-05:00

Phones have slowly started to eat up a large percentage of my imaginary spending. Ever since Motorola announced that it was going to take several months to port Android 2.1, I have been searching for a new phone. Now that Motorola has blown well past its own deadline - without providing a new deadline for the update - I have been seriously considering a new phone.

I feel like I have discussed Motorola before. They are an utterly incompetent company anymore; incapable of keeping promises and communicating with their customers in any way, shape, or form. They actively oppose their current customers, seeming to care only about the new sales that might be had. They do not deserve your money, no matter how shiny the Droid X and Droid 2 might be. Motorola will, as they have been doing for years now, find some way to screw you in the end. I promise.

That said, I have been window shopping for phones. Normally this is a harmless activity, but today I found myself hovering over the order button for a Google Nexus One. The N1 has always been on my radar, but recent experiences have made it look even more attractive.

The biggest problem I have with Android is that every company - HTC, Samsung, and especially the disgrace that is Motorola - insists on putting their own skin on top of Android. Nobody ships a phone with the native OS, which causes problems. The inclusion of a skin means that the manufacturers get to rob users of updates, contributing to the platform fragmentation that is - and likely will always be - the thorn in Android's side. In my case, for example, I have a Motorola CLIQ. It shipped with Android 1.5 topped with an invasive skin called Motoblur. Yes, Blur adds some polish and features to stock Android, but what it takes away is far greater: I am now three or four major revisions behind the curve. This means I miss out on everything contained in those updates including, but not limited to new features (i.e. Google Maps Navigation), new Apps (i.e. Amazon's Kindle Reader; Google Goggles), Performance and Interface improvements, and security updates. Google's own phone, the Nexus One which, as we recall, runs Android with no skins, was updated immediately when each new version was released. The lack of a third-party skin meant that very little extra programming was required to have a working release.

But some users appreciate skins. They cover up the rough edges of what is very much a tinkerer's OS. They appeal to the common user who has no interest in digging through pages of settings. This fact makes it lucrative for phone manufacturers - after all, people who want to futz with their smartphones all day are a small market segment. The real problem, then, is the fact that the process of flashing a new firmware onto the phone, an act that is relatively common among Android power users, has the unfortunate effect of voiding the phone's warranty. Manufacturers actively oppose these developers, these people trying to improve the platform, by adding extra layers of security to make it harder to port stock Android to phones. Furthermore, manufacturers make it difficult (if not impossible) to obtain drivers for their hardware. Without drivers for specific pieces of hardware, these modders cannot make truly stable versions of Android for phones.

It is frustrating to say the least. Google continues to pump out updates to it's already-solid OS, but Android's reputation is sullied by the fragmentation introduced by all the unnecessary skins piled atop it.

So what needs to happen? First, manufacturers need to provide either a vanilla Android ROM for their phones - an updated version with no skin or special features - or they must provide drivers for their devices and modify their warranties so that people can safely try different versions of the OS if they are so inclined. Ideally, they would simply give up on their skins altogether, or at least set reasonable deadlines for upgrades. Second, Google should be in the game setting strict rules (at least): Advertising campaigns have seen to it that Android is connected with Google in the minds of consumers, so every botched phone (Read: Motorola device) reflects poorly on Google as well as the manufacturer. Without regulations on when things must be updated or how long devices must be supported (Suggestion: for at least the next two major OS revisions), Google runs the risk of turning consumers off to Android as a product. I am of the opinion that Google needs to lay down these rules and enforce them. We know they have the muscle to support any threats, and with the increased momentum of Android in the mobile space, denying a manufacturer access to the OS could damage them a fair amount. Finally, Google needs to keep making its own pet phone. The Nexus One is being phased out as we speak, and its disappearance from the market is sad indeed. In a sea of Android devices with absurd skins and additions, the Nexus One has been a pillar of sanity for those of us who would rather have an up-to-date device with the latest bells and whistles than a pretty-on-the-surface device that lagged years behind.

Raleigh: The First Month

2010-07-11T18:21:00.003-05:00

So, everybody wants to hear about Raleigh. Things have been largely uneventful. I go to work and I come home and chill. There's been a lot of chilling at home.

So, work. It's actually been pretty awesome. I don't have any real responsibilities beyond training, so I've spent a lot of time reading things and playing around with some embedded dev kits. I've picked up a great deal so far, and I've met a lot of folks. Plenty of meetings and training sessions have graced my calendar. One thing I've discovered is that it is damn near impossible to have a steady short-term productivity output. I just can't do it. I have days where I'm a machine, knocking out tasks and writing C like there's no tomorrow. Then I have days where I can't manage to get my mind thinking in code and I sit and beat my head against the same problems over and over and over and over. As a whole, I like work. Even when I have my off days, I don't dread going. I'm happy there, and that fact alone makes this all worth it.

Outside of work is a different story, though not in a wholly negative way. Things are uneventful to be sure, since I haven't done much in the way of finding activities to do. I went out and picked up parts for my drum set last week, and it's been nice to have that back. I've lost a lot of skill over the last few years of not playing, but it feels good so far, and I've been practicing a fair amount. Mostly what I've discovered is that being an adult is expensive. Bills and utilities seem to arrive in a never ending steam of things that need money thrown at them and things like food and clothes never seem to stop either. Not that it's a problem, I'm just not used to the change in dollar amounts yet. I spend a ton more now, but I also make a ton more than I did in college. It'll all even out in my mind eventually, I am sure.

Alleigh and I have been searching for a church, and after two weeks of only ok church experiences, we visited a place that felt right. There were a while slew of young adults that, in addition to attending the church, came over and absorbed us into their group and chatted with us. I should have taken notes on people's names because I am awful at remembering them. Still, it felt like a good fit, and it seemed like a chance to make some friends, which I desperately want.

I got my car registered and all that, and it was far less traumatic than I had anticipated. After spending hours stressing over forms, I arrived at the DMV 10 minutes before it opened on Friday. I was first in line at the registration counter, ready to argue and battle to get my car registered. I handed my stack of papers to the woman behind the counter and waited as she read through them. She handed me a form to sign, told me an amount for my cheque, then handed me a license plate. I was somewhat taken aback, since it took less than 10 minutes from start to finish, but especially since I walked out of the DMV with a real, live license plate in my hands. I have since ordered vanity plates because, well, why not? My car, now feed from its' Illinois plates, looks a little silly without a plate on the front of the car. I'm thinking about getting something to put there. I haven't decided yet, though.

And so that is Raleigh for now.

Work: Week One / Raleigh: Week Two

2010-06-25T21:47:00.003-05:00

I made it through my first week of work.

Not that there was any doubt as to whether or not I would survive, of course, but I still feel a certain twinge of accomplishment below the surface. A sort-of good feeling that is just barely visible over the huge amounts of nervousness and exhaustion stocked up inside my head. I have no idea if I have been productive enough all week, and I certainly don't have a good grasp on everyone's name yet. I don't know what project I'll be on yet, nor do I know when (or if) my orientation stuff will end. I do know, however, that I am starting to get the hang of things. I know when to go eat lunch in order to be social. I know that Wednesdays I don't have to bring a lunch, and I know that casual Friday implies something considerably more casual than what I have experienced in the past.

I've been splitting my time at work, dividing it up between reading orientation stuff, getting trained on different tools, and working through a set of embedded labs. The labs have been the most enjoyable and the most frustrating part of the process. I am simultaneously intrigued by the problems and learning a whole new microcontroller and frustrated by the lack of quality (or even helpful) documentation. It is an adventure to be sure.

I can't say I have done much on the social front. Between adjusting to getting up early again (6am) and adjusting to early being a full hour earlier than it used to be (Still not used to EST), I have been downing coffee all day and coming home exhausted from sitting in my desk chair all day. I am hoping to adjust soon. Soon.

On Thursday of this week, I got a chance to tour the model shop at work, another building that houses a great many tools used to build prototypes. In this visit I was given the chance to toy with a plasma cutter, a tool which, upon first inspection, appears to use electricity, air, and magic to produce a green-coloured stream of sparks that cuts through metal as though it were butter. So, dolled up in the gloves, vest, and welding mask, I took up said plasma cutter and, with less effort than I would use to sign my name, cut chunks out of a slice of sheet metal. It was quite an experience and one which I hope to repeat if for no reason other than effortlessly cutting metal with green fire.

I am learning to cope with working for a small piece of a big company. So many of my favourite passive internet fixes are blocked, including the semi-vital Last.fm. This means no streaming radio (sad) but also no scrobbling (even sadder). I wish my Zune counted plays. This may be the thing that motivates me to get a great big uSD card for my phone, which does scrobble.

But beyond that, things are beginning to settle down. I brought some things to my cube to leave them there, just to see what it's like to really move in. I'm sure I will get to be more comfortable over the next few weeks and months. Once I get used to the project I will be assigned to, work will level out and become more predictable and exciting. For now, I will keep working to reset my internal clock and to see if I can't rustle up some friends.

Work: Day One

2010-06-21T17:05:00.004-05:00

For the past, say, 5 years of my life, I have spent my time getting ready for change. Things have been in a constant state of flux with nothing really lasting more than a few months. My internships were three or four months long, so I never really settled in anywhere. Classes were eleven weeks long - just long enough to get into a routine, but not long enough to really polish or perfect it.

I never bothered to decorate or accesorize my cubes at Honeywell or GEHC because I knew it was only going to be a few months before I left. I rarely used the refrigerator or brought substantial lunches; it felt too much like moving in. There were no knicknacks, no wall decorations beyond the company-provided phone directory and post-it notes with work information. I didn't bother to give anybody my desk number or work email address.

See, today I got business cards which, though an unexpected surprise, gave me a sense of permanence. The company was saying "you'll be here long enough to use all 250 of these." It was a bit strange to consider coming from my history of short-term commitments. Not that I intend to leave, or thought that I was signing up for anything other than a career when I took the job, but it was something to which I had given little thought. I suddenly feel the need to decorate my cube, to fill it with things that are me. Of course, having recently moved twice, I don't have much in the way of decor. There are things I need to remember to bring tomorrow, however: mostly my headphones, but also my semi-retired MX510 and Zune. If it's going to be my cube, I'll make it mine. It even has a nameplate with my name engraved into plastic. I felt important and appreciated.

I spent today training. My entire day, from 8:30 to 5, was spent watching presentations, taking quizzes, filling out forms, and reading documentation. It was not thrilling, but I didn't find myself falling asleep from lack of interest, either. I have come to the conclusion that benefits packages are intentionally confusing as a means of weeding out potential employees. If you can't decipher the benefits packages, you can't come back. That's not to say they are bad in any way, just confusing. I think I may have the hang of things now, though I tend to worry about time frames and deadlines when I am waiting for emails to arrive. It is nerve-wracking to me when I have to wait on some unknown source to follow through on things that I find vital.

The coffee is curiously delicious - and free. I don't understand how it works, but I am willing to accept it as fact and respect the unknowable coffee robot for its benevolence. Traffic was similarly unsettling; namely the fact that there was no traffic. Sure, there were cars on the road at both 8 and 5, but I never slowed below 55 the whole time I was on 440. New Bern was similarly accessible, and as such I was not late despite having taken roughly forever to eat my breakfast. In my defense, the toaster oven confused me and elongated the cooking of my french toast sticks. I'll do better tomorrow, I promise.

Tomorrow is day 2, during which I will meet more people and do more training. I look forward to, well, writing code.

Raleigh: The Move

2010-06-16T19:44:00.004-05:00

I don't actually feel like blogging but here I am anyways.

I'm here now. My stuff is 90-ish percent in place, though I'm sure things will eventually settle. That last ten percent is that hardest. My whole family is also here. Don't get me wrong - I appreciate the help getting all my adult-type things set up - but it's getting awfully annoying to have five people running around the house, each with their own agenda. Really, I just want to sleep. That's all I've wanted to do since I got here, actually, and I'm not exactly sure why. People tell me it is the heat getting to me, which is plausible since it is quite toasty here. I am also willing to admit stress as a factor, and the fact that I have been doing nothing but shopping, applying for things, and unpacking since I arrived.

I want to start working. Partly to ease the boredom, partly to start bringing in money for all the things I have bought and/or applied for this week, but mostly so that I can start to make some friends. I need other people with whom to speak. I want to start doing things and learning more. My brain is getting lethargic and I don't have the energy to use it for anything.

I have my own room with a closet and a bathroom. I also have a gigantic bed (for me) that is decidedly comfy. Here are pictures of it since I am rapidly losing my ability to form coherent sentences:

Mid-move: (As a side note, the formatting for Blogger is awful.)

And as it was tonight:

And that is my room.

The Move: Before

2010-06-10T16:18:00.005-05:00

I've been hiding from my blog because I started 3 separate posts and abandoned all of them within a few hours.

People have observed that I am doing surprisingly well with the idea of moving halfway across the country. I feel like I have expected it for a while now, though, and that makes it easier. I never expected to stay here in the midwest - though I always assumed I'd be moving to Silicon Valley or Seattle - and so I've been ready to accept a move for years now. Furthermore, I haven't spared any expense in surrounding myself with amazing friends who are going places as well. All these people that I grew up with (and am still close with) are disbursing all across the country (though curiously, most of us are ending up in the Eastern time zone). I've always kind-of expected it because these people - my best friends, new and old - are brilliant and can't be expected to stay cooped up in this Chicago suburb. It was an awesome place to grow up, yes, but we have to stretch our wings (just like Miley) and head for bigger places.

So the short answer to "Why are you so chill about moving halfway across the country?" is "I've been expecting to do so since high school."

My entire life is in carefully disheveled piles in a room of my parents' home - I don't have to pack anything since the moved will (allegedly) take care of that. This whole full-service move thing is going to spoil me. I'll never move on my own again. Not only do I not have to lift anything, but I don't even have to pack all my stuff into boxes. This may be the best thing ever.

So TC, Heather, and I took a trip to DC to chill with Ange and see the sights. I drove there - all 13 hours - accidentally, and then making it the trip home solo became a point of pride. The two days in between the road trip portions of the vacation were lovely. DC was sunny and hot, but not so much as to be painfully unpleasant. We visited museums, art galleries, and memorials on day 1 and just strolled around the city on day 2. We marveled at the superiority, cleanliness, and speed of the DC metro system and lamented the lack of casual restaurants in the richer districts of the city. We visited the memorials for World War 2 and the Korean War after dark and shared solemn silence. We dodged a rainstorm and hid in Ange's store for an afternoon. We had beer and pie and got accused of being seventeen. It was an incredible (and, for TC and I, incredibly spontaneous - only a week of planning) trip and well worth the time away from my childhood home. I still need to sort through my photos from the trip, but I can say that I would love a wider prime and one with VR.

A bunch of people piled into my house on Sunday to say goodbye. It was nice to see friends and extended family and all that condensed into a single afternoon and evening. I shook hands and gave hugs and described my job at least a hundred times. I showed off photos of my new home to anyone interested and felt uncomfortable when people would cry. I got to play favourites with my last 3 Spotted Cows and I sat under the canopy in the rain and let it mist on me. It was pleasant, the conversation, and well worth the time spent.

I've been spending time on worthwhile things lately, I think. I am also in a list-writing mood apparently.

It has been strange to not pack; I have been getting things in order for the new home and making moving decisions and searching the house for things that might be mine. The pile has grown quite large. I never knew I had so many things that I needed to take with me. The kitchen is the biggest offender here, what with its dishes, pots, pans, small appliances, etc, etc, etc. Having a kitchen is entirely too much work.

DC: The Prequel

2010-06-05T00:09:00.002-05:00

In the last 4 days, I have spent 27 hours driving. I am happy to report that I am one with my car. Jill, my car and I make an excellent team (where Jill is my nuvi 755T).

I have a great deal to discuss about our semi-spontaneous trip to Washington, DC, but right now, I am exhausted. I've driven more than 13 hours today and I can feel it all over.

It will be (for now) sufficient to say that it was an incredible trip; worth every moment.

An Attempt to Empty

2010-05-28T22:31:00.002-05:00

Just after realizing that I had a little under a week left in my apartment, I started on a half-assed attempt to eat all the food left in my fridge and pantry. I have been wildly unsuccessful in this endeavour. I even went so far as to purchase more food with which to eat existing food which, as you might expect, left me with a net gain of food rather than the net loss for which I had hoped. I am working on one of my three remaining beers in an attempt to save the most important food items first. Breakfast tomorrow will consist of attempting to finish the 3/4ths of a carton of orange juice still in the fridge. I imagine I will have no trouble finishing off my last set of Swiss Rolls that I hid in the freezer, but the thinly-sliced turkey will likely go to waste. Such is life.

I mean, hell, I'm a day away from being done with college (round one). I'm feeling oddly numb to it all. No, numb isn't the right word - I'm feeling everything, I'm just a bit detached from it. I'm taking this all remarkably well considering that I am, well, me. How I respond to the actual move is a different story, though. If I manage to get out of the house and make friends, I think I'll be fine. Yoga class? I do like the thought of improving my posture. And my Glee group tells me it's a good place to meet people. I'll have to buy sweats or something. We'll see how that goes.

Guys, I graduate tomorrow. I always thought I'd be a rockstar by this point, but no, education has prevailed. I'm not even sure what kind of music I'd like to be famous for at this point. I've been delving pretty heavily into the folk/indie scene as of late. I'm trying to get Alleigh excited about it, but I have been unsuccessful so far.

See, what I should be doing right now is playing Mass Effect 2, but I send my fragile things (computers, guitars, cameras) how with my parents after the senior design show, so all I have left is my half-working laptop. I'm having trouble adjusting back to this keyboard. I wonder what sort of laptop I'll have at work.

This beer is pretty delicious. Central Waters Brewing Company's Shine On. It has suns on it, an is so indie there's no logo on the bottle cap. Yeah, I know. I'm so indie it hurts.

Finality

2010-05-27T23:33:00.002-05:00

Things keep happening and I am in no position to stop them. This is a troubling fact that I have slowly come to terms with over the last two weeks. So much has happened.

Right now, of course, I am sitting at my desk, where I have spent a significant portion of the last 3 days. Having nothing to do has left me quite confused and aimless. I am hoping that I develop a method of coping with this free time - also known commonly as a "hobby." I would not be opposed to exercise being part of this hobby.

The Senior Design Show is tomorrow. I am both excited and relieved, as it is - even moreso than graduation - the final rite of passage at this school. Senior design was certainly an adventure; one that more than taught its intended lessons. I have learned an incredible amount both as an engineer and as a team member. The hardships encountered have left me with a bit more trust in my own abilities than I had before. The system works.

I went to my last Milwaukee show with Steph and Jake. We saw The Tallest Man On Earth at the Pabst. Having never heard of TTMoE before the show on Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised and blown away by the performance. The whole band is just one guy playing guitar like it was breathing. The music was incredible, as was his interaction with the audience. It was all simply breathtaking and incredibly calming.

I bought Mass Effect 2 last week and I haven't stopped playing it yet. Something about the Mass Effect universe sucks me in. I'm still sad about losing my two characters from ME1, but it's not quite worth it to me to re-buy ME1 and play through it 2+ times just to get a character in ME2. I'm doing just fine with the clean slate. Still, I will be safeguarding my ME2 characters in preparation for ME3. I'm just saying.

People keep saying goodbye; I wish they would stop. Honestly, I'm just not sure what to say to people. Goodbye, maybe I'll see you again someday? It seems insincere, but I have no better time frame. Who knows when I will be back here again, and if everyone will still be here? I don't like these implied promises; I feel as though I am letting people down implicitly. I mean, yes, I will miss people - lots of them - but I'm just not sure how to say goodbye. Millions of people do this every day, I'm sure I won't screw it up too badly.

I'm trying to use Google Chrome as my primary browser for a while, just to see what it's like. The first thing that's tipped me in Chrome's favour is the Google-built extensions for Gmail, Reader, Voice, and Wave. Live notifications from inside the browser without taking up screen space: it is marvelous. And, speaking of screen space, Chrome gets me about half a toolbar more screen, and tab tearing works far better (YouTube videos don't reset, hooray!). But we'll see how it goes. I feel like I'm betraying Mozilla - my browser of choice since... I started on the internet (Netscape forever!) - but Firefox has gotten a bit chubby and crashy lately. Chrome now has all the extensions I need (Mouse Gestures, adblock, userscripts) so my last excuse for not trying it full-time disappeared. I'm so soaked into the Google ecosystem that it's not worth fighting it - Google owns me online, and I am ok with it. For now.

I'm covering for my fear right now with technical talk and video games. I'm aware of it, though, so I guess that's good. I have no qualms about admitting that I am terrified. I'm just going to act confident with the hopes of convincing myself.

On a whim, TC and Heather and I are heading for Washington DC next week, as a sort-of going away trip. It'll make my last two weeks in the midwest more hectic, but the trip promises to be more than worth it. And I need to get better about doing things. I'm going to need all of you to remind me to get out of my house and do new things when I move. That's my biggest fear.

I want my grades. I am quite sure I'm going to meet my personal goal for college, but it'd be nice to know for sure. I've been working my ass off for four years now. I believe I'm a better person for it. At least, I hope I am.

I'm not looking forward to moving twice in under a month. My plan is basically to unpack as little as I can while home. I haven't many things left at the house, so hopefully there will be little to pack. I cannot express how excited I am to have my own room. I have covered this previously. I'm going to sleep terribly while at home; I always do. It is a byproduct of not fitting anymore. I've been gone so long now that I have no bed, no place of my own left in the house - as well it should be. I am old enough to be moving on now. There are little things that bother me, though. Birthdays were never too big of a deal - phone calls have sufficed in the past and will in the future. I worry about family holidays - missing Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and so forth. I have been blessed with living close enough to my aunts and uncles to see them and my cousins a few times a year. I don't know how often I'll get back now. At least for Christmas, I hope. Really, the biggest nagging at my mind is the Chicago Auto Show, the long-running tradition in my family. Maybe I'll come back. Flights can't be that expensive, especially if I fly into MKE. Regardless, I'm being led, and so things will continue to progress, as they always do.

Ok, children, I have to run away to bed. Tomorrow will be along day of milling about in a suit talking about the project we have dedicated nine months of our life to. Our child, as it were.

Sponsorship

2010-05-14T22:36:00.002-05:00

Today has been absurd. The good kind of absurd, though.

Now fully unwound on this Friday night, I am now aware of how much today was actually the end of my year. It's curious, especially since I have another week of classes, four finals, and numerous hours devoted to senior design left between me and graduation. Still, it seems - right now in this moment - like I am finished. Some combination of today's events have left me feeling strangely at peace about packing up my life and trucking halfway across the country (halfway is really as far as I can go considering that I'm starting in Illinois).

The bulk of today was spent up in Neenah, WI at Plexus corp. presenting our senior design project and watching the other presentations also there. It was a sponsorship thing; they promised us money, and we promised to keep them in the loop about our project. Along the way, we are free to ask them questions about any part of our project. Then, at the end of it all, we truck on up to their HQ and present our project to them (and get a tour of the facilities to boot). Their sponsorship worked out better than I ever could have hoped: not only did they help us attain a seemingly-nonexistent part, but they provided invaluable advice and answers. Even if money was not part of the equation, I would still have pushed my group to go for the sponsorship knowing what I now know. Though I'm not complaining about the monetary segment of the sponsorship - we will end up paying less than $10 each for our entire project. Oh, and there is the minor detail of them giving me a job post-graduation, which is far and above the most significant portion (my group members be damned).

It was weird going back to the HQ in Neenah. The last time I was there, I spent most of the day in interviews. I was scared and excited and trying desperately to prove my worth - and apparently I did a good job. While I didn't end up getting a job in Neenah (I wouldn't be freaking out nearly as much about moving 4 hours from home), the team that interviewed me liked me enough to recommend me to Raleigh when it because clear there were no jobs for me to have (oops). I saw a lot of the folks that interviewed me back in February, each of them seemed pleased to see me, and asked abut my start date in Raleigh, etc, etc. They seemed genuinely pleased that I had taken a job with the company, and I felt happier for it. Everything seems to be reinforcing the good feelings I have about this move and this job - I haven't doubted it for much time at all. I also ran into a friend with whom I had classes at MSOE who now worked as a Software Engineer for Plexus. I got to ask him how things were, how the job felt, and how he liked the work. It was incredibly comforting to hear someone with the same major as me speak highly of the company - and to seem confident in the job. I worry about these things (needlessly, apparently).

Out presentation went well, and the engineers seemed interested in our project. We got to meet the people who had been helping us via email all year long, and chatted with them about the problems we had. The server and hardware survived the trip relatively unharmed, and our demo went down without a hitch. It was satisfying, having everything work (although apparently there was a typo in the powerpoint, I haven't checked). Once our sponsors (and my future employers) were happy with us, I was happy with us. They seemed impressed with our (likely under-informed) decision to take on the project, and they seemed even more impressed with the amount of progress we have made on it.

But Senior Design didn't monopolize the whole day. A majority of the senior CEs headed over to Rock Bottom for a celebratory dinner put on by our program director, which was a blast. Dinner, and the conversation surrounding it, was another catalyst in my feeling more at peace than I did a day ago. These people - the select people with whom I am graduating with that I respect (it is a subset, I promise) are my peers - my friends. They are the people I will likely talk to for the rest of my life regardless of geographical constraints. They are just as excited about their new endeavours as am I, and our collective insanity is what will keep us friends. Yes, it's mushy, but you have to understand: while at Rock Bottom, enjoying the conversation and the company, we discovered a concoction so delicious it borders on dangerous. You see, Rock Bottom will, for a pittance, blend their pale ale with a shot of gin for your intense drinking pleasure. What may sound marginal at best is, assuming you enjoy gin, fantastic. For some reason, the flavours work together in an incredible fashion to form a new drink with the feel and taste of a lighter beer but the delicious aftertaste of gin. It is absolutely fantastic. It is also incredibly potent.

My headphones are more comfortable when I'm not wearing glasses.

Paradigm Shift

2010-05-09T00:29:00.002-05:00

I've caught myself starting to count up lasts.

My last trip to Mayfair. My last 8th week at MSOE. Etcetera, etcetera. I've been trying to avoid the whole thing since it seems like an express route to self-pity and mourning, neither of which I have time for at this stage of the game. Still, it is strange to think that, three weeks from now, I will be packing up my life and leaving Milwaukee with no intention of returning. Then, two weeks after that, I will kiss my childhood home goodbye and drive nine hundred miles southeast to start all over again. It's a funny feeling to be sure.

It's difficult to shift from counting lasts to anticipating firsts.

The Middle of the Beginning

2010-05-05T23:27:00.003-05:00

I feel like I need to write about something - anything, really. Something creative or meaningful.

I keep losing myself in these what-if situations lately. What if I had handled things differently? What if I was 6-10 years older? What if I was a secret agent? (Chuck is a big influence on my subconscious). It's sort-of like an allergy, actually, brought on by specific interactions. Different what-ifs crop up around exposure to different situations in life, and each what-of has a different effect on the following minutes, hours, or even days. Also, I frequently desire the source code for my brain so that I might be able to modify it to avoid such thinking. If I had the code, I would totally open-source it. It would totally be the most popular project on Google Code.

I have a lot of things I haven't admitted to people. Not deep dark secrets or anything, just silly things that I think about. Things I'd love to talk about and gossip about like I was back in 8th grade. Thoughts that surprise or frighten me often have no place in normal conversation regardless of how often they pop into my mind. My own overactive thought production makes me wonder: how does everybody else deal with this? I just sort of cover them up and put them in a pile to ignore with extreme prejudice. I am intrigued by other solutions to this overabundance of non-socially-acceptable thoughts. I refuse to believe I'm the only one that is this specific brand of crazy.

In other news, I graduate in 4-ish weeks. Does anybody want to rent my apartment? We need to get rid of it for June or else we have to pony up for an extra month. We forgot about the whole 60-day notice thing, and apparently 49 days is not quite enough. A $300 mistake wouldn't be the most expensive screw-up ever, though, so I suppose I will live. At least the internet isn't in my name and there are no utilities to cancel - I'm not doing real well on the whole "responsibility" thing right now. It's senior design, I swear: I spend most of my weekends in the lab working (I2C still doesn't work and I have absolutely no idea why), and Wednesday/Friday mornings are spent there as well. In addition to those blocks, I have the trickle of emails to keep up with: I cemented myself as the point of contact for all external correspondence, so I have emails from all over the place asking me for information and responses. I wish I could log that time to make myself look better, but at least my team appreciates it. And now we have presentations coming up: at least 4 in the next 4 weeks starting tomorrow. Then Friday for the practice show, then the next Friday for our sponsor / my future employer, then two weeks from then for the real thing. It is both scary and exciting. I do get to wear my suit a whole bunch, though, and that is never a bad thing.

What happened with the Microsoft Kin? I was psyched about it - ready to accept it as the successor to the Sidekick, the latest and greatest featurephone/smartphone hybrid aimed at on-the-go youth. I wanted it to be an awesome platform and to gain users and grow and mature and just generally succeed. Except now it won't. Why? First off, the hardware and software are lacking. Both Engadget and Boy Genius Report commented that the devices are quite lacklustre, even frustrating to use. Not a good sign. The more damning problem, however, is the plans: Microsoft expects people - keep in mind this is a device aimed at teens and early twenties - to pay for standard voice and text ($40 min) in addition to a full smartphone data plan ($30 min). $70/mo for a poorly-designed featurephone? Honestly, at this point I hope it fails. The Kin started out as an awesome idea, but Microsoft dropped the ball and ended up with a shoddy product that's not even worth the price of admission.

Reddit has been down since around 4pm today. It has completely thrown me off my normal routine of idly clicking through to stories and scrolling through the comments. The front page hasn't changed in hours since they suspended all accounts and made the site read-only while they try to fix the slowness/503 errors. I haven't been an active redditor for too long, but already I've worked the site into my daily routine. I'm going through withdrawal - I even stooped so low as to return to Digg, albeit temporarily. It was awful.

I wish somebody could tell me exactly what my net wages will be. I would also like to know how much I will spend per month on rent, utilities, insurance, and other niceties. I just want to know that I'll be making. It's greedy, I suppose, but I more want to know just to have an idea. I'm going to try to start up my spreadsheets early and keep them updated. I want to be a fiscally responsible adult. I want to pay down my college/car debit as soon as I can without sacrificing too much. I want to be independent. I'll get there soon enough.

I've been trying to figure out what I want to do about telecom stuff. What I really want is Verizon FiOS, but that's not available. ATT U-Verse would be awesome, but it, too, is unavailable at my home. I'm stuck with ATT DSL or Time Warner Cable, neither of which is a terribly good choice. What jackass decided that home users only need 768k of upload? I'd gladly sacrifice some downstream for 1 or 2MBps up. But I am stuck. I could always get Clear 4G (cue laugh track). At least I'm not getting stuck with Comcast.

Speaking of the internet, you all need to take a minute and read this article. The FCC is taking some awesome steps toward ensuring the future of the internet. Net Neutrality is a hugely important topic for everyone these days, and it is important that you understand what it going on. It may seem like some esoteric thing especially for geeks, but it will affect you in the near future if the telecoms have their way. Feel free to chat me up if you need more details. I'd be more than happy to explain the ideas behind net neutrality.

And with that, I should probably wrap up this scattered blogpost. Farewell.

Mundane

2010-04-30T23:52:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I've made it here to blog. I've been busy and detached.

School is coming to a close. Some things, like senior design, make it seem like the end is far too near while others, like my math class, make the end seem like it is months away. I have 4 more weeks. I am entering the last four weeks of being an undergrad, and of being a student (at least for the time being). I am sure my mind would be thoroughly broken by this realization were it not preoccupied with senior design.

I picked up my graduation announcements and tickets today, which is incredibly frightening because it means I have to present my senior design project 3 times in the next 4 weeks and it doesn't work yet. I made a hell of a poster though (with lots of help from Heather) and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's getting entered in a poster competition that happens next week or so, which it just another thing I have to attend (but hopefully it is awesome enough to earn us some winnings. I'm seriously really proud of this poster).

But the big news is that I haven't updated in forever and therefore neglected to mention that I signed a lease and have a real, live place to live in Raleigh. If you'd like to send me letters (starting mid-June), hit me up with an email and I will be more than glad to give you the address. I managed to snag a 3-bed 2.5-bath townhouse in a pretty neighbourhood with a garage and double-wide driveway and other niceties. I'd gush more, but I've been doing enough of that (and I2C doesn't work - why!) lately. Long story short, I have a futon, an extra bed, and a spare bedroom if anybody wants to come visit. It will be great.

I feel like I should have a lot more to say after these long absences, but the truth is that things have become incredibly mundane lately. Life is mostly senior design and pretending to follow along in class. Soon enough.

Soon enough.

Raleigh: Second Stage

2010-04-10T22:49:00.006-05:00

Friends, this has been a long week. An incredible one, to be sure, but certainly very long and exhausting. I'll get the little things out of the way first.

Little stuff. I finally bit the bullet and got a set of nice headphones - Sennheiser HD-555s, in fact. They are marvelous. As expected, they are not at precise as the HD-650s, but for $200 less they are excellent. Even at stock, I am loving the speaker-like sound and the wider sound stage of open cans like these. They're not so precise as to disqualify lossy formats, which is nice, since a majority of my music is still mp3. They are a little bassy at times, but there are some things I want to try to make them a little more balanced in that regard. Head-Fi has a number of different hacks outlined in their forums, some of which I am considering. My only issue with them? The cable ends with a 1/4" jack rather than the smaller 3.5mm, meaning I have to use the somewhat bulky adapter to listen to most of my stuff. It's a small price to pay.

But really, I'm stalling. My big section of excitement this spring break week was my house-finding journey. My dad and I left for Raleigh at 4.30am CST on Wednesday and, after a short episode of getting lost in Ohio (the whole state looks the same, seriously), arrived at the hotel at about 9pm EST (Fifteen hours, for those of you who are counting). Thursday was filled with visits to apartment complexes, talking to people, looking at apartments, and trying to keep the floor plans and features straight in my mind. The day was actually kind-of a bummer, since a lot of the places were not for me. A random find in Morrisville ended the day on a high note, with two clear winners if I elect to go for an apartment. Friday morning brought us Christy, a cheerful and very helpful real estate agent. She took us around town to look at the townhomes I have picked out online. Friday was a great deal more positive - several of the places were quite nice, not to mention affordable. We went to lunch and chatted a bit, at which time, Christy filled us in on the area (and mentioned she might be able to help Alleigh find a teaching job). After the viewings, Friday, too, had three clear winners. With the rankings in order, I am now waiting for applications to arrive, at which time I can fill out 3 different sets of paper with the same information over and over and over again. Still, any of the top 3 (technically 5 if we count the apartments) will make me terribly pleased with my living arrangements.

This was sort-of a realization step in my moving process. Spending more than 24 hours in the area led to me starting to finally accept that I am actually moving 900 miles away from my friends and family to pursue the job. And, despite a twinge of sadness about leaving behind relationships with people, I feel nothing but excitement. I am excited to work - to put my sixteen years of education to use in the world. I am excited to strike out on my own - for real this time, with no safety net and no convenient route to home. I am excited beyond words to finally, for the first time since I was eight years old, have my own bedroom. My own bedroom! With an attached bathroom and walk-in closet! My own bed that I paid for with my own money that I earned at my own job! My own room. My own room! Nobody to turn out the lights when I want to stay up, nobody to turn them on while I'm asleep. Nobody else to blame for messes. Space for my guitars and computers and a great big comfy bed! This fact alone makes any of the homes I toured worthwhile. Even the smallest of the places provided me with something I have longed for for fourteen years: my own space.

Speaking of my job, I was delighted to meet with my boss-to-be on Thursday. My dad got a chance to meet some of the people I'll be working with, and he even got to take a look around the building. It seemed a little strange, but I felt better knowing that my dad had seen the place and was just as excited as me. Kevin then took us out to lunch and answered a bunch of questions about the area as well - it was extremely helpful and made me feel a bit better about the move. We discussed starting dates, which made my head spin a bit - both with nervousness and with excitement. I have been known to underestimate my own abilities. Every now and again, when I hit a snag with something related to school, I question my ability to do my job. Curiously, I have been less worried about this lately. After all, they interviewed me thoroughly - two days worth of interview - and came to the conclusion that, not only do they think I am capable of doing a good job, but they are excited about having me start work. It is infectious, having people outside you believe in you so strongly. The whole of my world has sort of risen up in a warm pile of good feelings and well wishes. It's done wonders for my anxiety.

I am excited to move. Returning to MSOE tomorrow will be the first challenge in seven long weeks of waiting. Certainly, Senior Design will inflate to fill more time as our deadlines approach, and classes will continue as they have been going, but the promise of a whole new life in a beautiful home all my own with a job that I (will) love is too much to forget about. I feel awful for saying it, but graduation cannot come soon enough. I only wish I could bring some of my friends with me - but the advent of the internets will undoubtedly allow me to stay in touch. According to Josh, I'll be back next July at least.

I love you all.

Danger

2010-03-26T17:25:00.005-05:00

For the past few weeks, I have been coming to Blogger, typing a short paragraph, then leaving and trying again in a few days. It has not been productive. I haven't had anything to say.

But now I think I do have something: The internet is killing us, socially. Ok, maybe 'killing' is too strong a word, and maybe 'us' is too general. The internet is changing some of us socially. That's not very strong or assertive at all. It's too bland. The internet is killing us socially, dammit. It is way too easy to get caught up in some twisted trip through memory lane and end in the wrong places. Basically, the Internet is made up of two things: porn (obviously) and bad memories. There are small percentages of useful bits here and there; social networks and Flash games, mostly; but the truth is, it's a horrible place populated by people who are anonymous and therefore jackasses. It's a sad truth.

I don't know how I end up in places that bring back bad or unwanted memories. I just sort of stumble there some time between shutting off my brain when I sit down at the computer and jerking awake suddenly because there's some piece of data on my screen I didn't want to be reminded of. I will admit, I'm guilty of mindlessly clicking around the internet, and most times, I just end up wasting hours on Reddit (IAMA can be fascinating, I swear). Bet there are times where I end up at social profiles of people I should be looking up. Ex-girlfriends, old crushes, sworn enemies. Ok, so I don't actually have any sworn enemies, but the point remains the same: the ubiquity of personal information available on the internet makes it way too easy for us to anonymously check up on people, and, in turn, for people to check up on us.

I am pretty free with information. I'll give away my non-vital information on a whim if I can get an adequate reward for it. It's not hard to find me online if you know what to search for (curiously, I don't actually appear until the second page when Googling my name), and I don't mind that. The only reason I bothered to lock anything down was for potential employers, whom I feel would not hire me due to the lack of excitement present in my life as it currently exists. It would be quite simple for an ex (or an enemy) to find one of my social profiles online and see how I'm doing.

It's all dangerous, though. You can avoid someone in person, you can even cut all ties with them - but our intense attachment to social networks means that one slightly tipsy evening of depressed searching can undo any emotional healing that may have taken place. Not that I speak from experience, because I have definitely never done this. And, to be honest, the internet is heartless when it comes to finding things out. So your old love's got a new love? There's no easy way to to explain "In a relationship," and Facebook isn't so good at breaking the news gently. It's as though we need a filter to tell our computers what we can handle and what we can't. Some sort of web filter to give us a gentle "Are you sure you want to visit this Twitter feed?" followed by a swift kick in the head. We're at the point where we need our computers to fill in the jobs formerly done by friends in protecting us from ourselves.

Or maybe it's just me.

The Job

2010-03-18T22:44:00.003-05:00

So I'm slow, fine. It's been almost a week since I got the call from Plexus that they want me to work for them. Yeah, I've been all secretive with the name (online, at least) for some unknown reason. I feel like companies don't usually search the Blogger for their company name, but I'm paranoid.

That said, I got the job. The job. The one that I've been excited about ever since my first round of interviews during which I enjoyed myself while being grilled by engineers and managers alike. I got a call on Friday with some details, then the actual offer letter itself on Tuesday. I had it signed and sent back by Wednesday. Now I just have to turn down the other two places that want me. I feel bad about saying no and I can't explain why. I'm not going to hurt the feelings of a corporation. I mean, what are they going to do, not hire me? Still, I feel some twinge of guilt whenever I think about having to respond with a resounding "no."

Of course, all it takes to cure that is a short bout of thinking about my next great adventure: I'm moving to Raleigh in June. I've been tweeting about this like mad, but I've either been busy, cold, or playing Altitude and therefore have failed to blog about it yet. (Yes, I have a hard time blogging when my hands are cold. Hush.) The big news about the move is that my sister has decided she wants to move with me, a fact I am both pleased and excited about. I'm making an attempt to find a use case for Google Wave by starting a wave with all the information I can think of regarding the move. I'm really trying, Wave, I am.

Of course, now that I know what's happening next, I want to be there. The next few months will be a practice in patience and perseverance as my desire to attend school diminishes along what will hopefully not be exponential decay.

I discovered what has become one of my favourite albums of all time in less than a week. Aim and Ignite by fun. It is an incredible album. Think of The Format only bigger. It's the same frontman, but fun. is a bigger, more unique sound. It's like what Queen would have sounded like if Freddie Mercury was a hipster. It is amazing. I can't really go on to describe it further except to say that I have been listening to little else this past week. Right now I am almost to 250 plays in the last 6 days. It is that incredible. If you like music at all, you need to check this album out. Need to. It's not optional.

I'm really short on words lately. The spring weather is starting to come back, and I love that the sun is out. I added Raleigh to my phone's weather widget simply because it makes me more excited whenever I check the weather. That, I suppose, is all I have for now.

Raleigh: First Contact

2010-03-05T22:06:00.003-06:00

I'm breaking my "this laptop is way too huge to be used on an airplane" rule here. I thought maybe, since this plane seems to have an unusual amount of legroom, my laptop might seem less gargantuan, but it's still quite gigantic. My internal organs are never a fan of flying. Something about being mushed up against various bone structures upsets them, my brain especially. It protests from the moment the plane starts rolling to the time I get off. Calm down, brain. Flying is not meant for people with squishy insides, I think. But I'm not supposed to be thinking about airplanes or rental cars (ugh) or the fact that I wish so very much that my laptop had a backlit keyboard or the melodrama playing out between my grey matter and skull. I'm supposed to be thinking about Raleigh.

I'll begin with a summary in case you don't want to muck through my superficial and under-informed analysis. I could live and work in Raleigh. Moving and getting acclimated and finding friends and all of that would be very difficult, but it's not impossible. We already knew the job was awesome, and now I know it is an exciting job with interesting and intelligent people. With a lot of work and prayer, I can see myself moving to the Raleigh area if I get a job offer.

It's kind-of scary to admit that, but after today, I feel confident. For one thing, this whole state – or at least the parts I saw, from Durham to Raleigh – is beautiful. There is nature all over the place, and it's so bright green that you can't help but smile. There are old trees everywhere, there are patches of wild nature all over the place, and the whole area sort-of feels like living in a great big forest. It is wonderful. I drove through Raleigh, Durham, Morrisville, and Cary during my afternoon of unplanned time and they're all very similar when it comes to residential areas: lots of trees with houses tucked in between them. It seems quiet and calm and generally wonderful.

I suppose I should talk about the interview, seeing as how it was the main point of the trip. It was, as I said of my last interview with this company, enjoyable. I sat and talked with two engineers for most of the morning, and the session became half conversation about things (mostly smartphones) and me answering questions and solving problems. I wrote a bunch of code on a white board, I chatted about C and OO and keywords, and I generally had a good time of it. I'm no whiz kid when it comes to embedded software, but these interviews keep renewing my faith that I am, indeed, a competent engineer. I always feel somewhat smug after an interviewer says they are impressed with a solution I've provided, though I never show it. I'm so very modest that way, right? I think egotistical is the word. Regardless, I felt excellent about all the questions asked of me, had solutions that worked, and had some good conversation. My sessions with the manager and HR were short and to-the-point, more about relocation, the structure of the Raleigh branch, and me than anything else. Everyone I met seemed happy, excited to be there, and extremely knowledgeable. The engineers who spent a few hours quizzing me were sharp – I could learn an incredible amount working there, just by sitting around talking with people. It's an exciting feeling.

Raleigh is a significantly smaller office, and as such, the feeling is that of a much smaller company. Everybody seems to know everyone else, and the office is more laid back and friendly. I was informed that they do a lot of team activities and other fun events, which eased my "I'm going to have no friends in the area" worries a bit.

For the whole of the afternoon, I drove around largely aimlessly. Downtown Raleigh isn't too big – it only lasts for a few blocks in each direction – but it's a very pretty place, and (from my car windows) it seemed like there was a lot to do. It has a very modern feel, with glass buildings interspersed with historical structures and monuments. Even in the city, the overwhelming feeling of nature is there, with large grassy areas and trees and generally just a great big green hug. I trucked out to Durham later in the afternoon to see what it was like. At first glance, it is definitely an older and larger urban area. The buildings (to my untrained eye) look like 60/70/80s buildings with lots of concrete. Not bad, but certainly a different feel. I was running short on time when I hit Durham, but I happened upon a visitor center, so I popped in and got some information about the area that I can read about later. It looks like a nice, if not busy, place.

The real hotness was in the suburbs and outskirts of Raleigh in the residential areas. There isn't a place I found to get a house in an ugly area. It was absolutely beautiful everywhere I drove. This nature stuff is going to catch on, trust me. The vibrant colours of the trees and generally unkempt forest were breathtaking, and I fell in love with the area. I've sort-of decided I want to live in Cary, and not just because it was introduced to me by the manager as "Collective Area for Relocated Yankees" (or something to that effect). It is just (I think) a bit south of Raleigh, and it is gorgeous. I managed to find a few pods of townhouses and apartments (I'm calling it now: apartments and other for-rend properties in a close group are a "pod"), each was as beautiful as the last. I'm not sure I could go wrong.

But I should talk about my rental car. I picked it up at 9pm EST on Thursday in the dark. As I walked past at least 10 Focuses and Elantras, I came to my car for the duration: a white Pontiac G6. Not one of the Focus SESs parked on either side of it. No, I got the deceptively-upholstered Pontiac. The interior was comfy, I have to admit, with leather and power everything, but nothing was intuitive (likely due to my exclusivity to Hyundai and Ford) and everything was awkward. Everything was at least decent until I got up to highway speeds at which time the car revealed a number of unsettling rattles and creaks, and an awkward amount of whistling from somewhere became apparent. TO make matters worse, the gas pedal seemed to have an enormous dead zone: I had to stomp it almost to the floor to get any throttle whatsoever, but that much was always way too much. I had either no throttle or ALL The THROTTLE. Driving was an adventure, made more harrowing by the fact that the brakes had a similar digital feel: they were either doing nothing or STOPPING YOU RIGHT NOW. I may or may not have hit my face on the steering wheel when I stopped the first time. So, the moral of the story is kind-of moot since Pontiac has met an untimely end, but it was still a pretty poor vehicle.

I need a common-business-occurrence-etiquette class. I don't know how hotel check-ins and outs are supposed to work (how do I get a receipt?) and I have no idea how to deal with rental cars (am I supposed to fill the tank before I take it back? Don't look at me like I'm stupid, parking lot attendant dude). I did learn a great deal about the differences in traffic signage between the Midwest and the southeast: North Carolina likes its street paint and is not such a fan of road signs. Also, I discovered that there are areas where the lanes are not marked by anything on the ground; instead they are controlled by large electric signs above the road that can change at will. It's an excellent traffic trick, but it confused the living daylights out of me as I tried to get to my hotel.

So, the overreaching goal of this whole trip was to get a feel for the area and the company. I achieved this goal, I think, and for it being my first time doing so, I think I did a decent job. I'm sure I still have an incredible amount to learn about the area, but that will come with time – if I get the job. For now, I'll be hoping that I'll get an offer. If that happens, then I can start worrying about the move. This could be the start to a whole new chapter in my life, an adventure, an experience. It's frightening to think about, yet thrilling at the same time. My heart doesn't know whether to beat faster from fear or from excitement – but it's certainly telling me something.

On Phone Drama and SlideScreen

2010-02-27T21:40:00.008-06:00

I've had a bit of phone drama lately, and I've had a desire to blog as well, so I may as well combine the two.

On Tuesday, Motorola pushed an update for the CLIQ (1.3.18). Eager to gain the claimed benefits of this incremental update, I had my phone check for a update. After an hour or so of checking every 5 minutes, the update hit my phone. I waited impatiently as it downloaded, and watched eagerly as it installed. The install chugged along slowly, as OTA installs are wont to do, until one of the reboots simply stopped at a black screen with a blue bar across the bottom and "0x000A" in yellow on the small blue bar. There it sat for over an hour, until I decided it had hiccuped and I had best kick it in the head by doing a battery pull. This seemed to work until the phone had booted and was showing me nothing on the calendar. Curious, I thought, pondering why my calendar had disappeared. Then I noticed the time and date displayed on the phone: 31 December 1969 at 6:00PM CST (GMT -6). Extremely curious. It was not until nearly 14 hours later that it was pointed out to me the meaning of this date: It is 0, the Epoch in CST. The Linux kernel underlying Android had decided it was back at its creation, its earliest known date. I tried resetting the date manually, but nothing would stick, so I elected to contact T-Mobile and see what they could do.

As it turns out, T-Mobile's reputation (by me) was marred by this whole occurrence. What was once a warm, friendly company that really appreciated me turned into something different - but that's getting ahead of myself. I chatted with "Alise" for well over an hour, trying this and that and all manner of things to reset the time. I should note that, despite the time issues, the phone still functioned as expected - it could make and receive calls, texts, and I could get online. That all changed when Alise suggested I try a master reset - wiping all my data and starting factory fresh. So I did. And the phone, stubborn as it is, stayed in 1969. When I tried to log into my MotoBlur account (the mandatory first step with the CLIQ), I was denied access because (get this) the clock on my phone was wrong. So now I had gone from a clearly-broken-but-still-usable device to a clearly-broken-and-essentially-bricked device. So, Alise told me she'd send me a new one. That's fine, I thought, one night without my phone, how bad could it be? But there was no complementary overnight shipping. There was no sympathy. No admission of fault. No attempts to make things right. There was a "your new phone will arrive in 5-7 days, or you can pay $20 for 3-day shipping." What? This is no good. Your update breaks my phone. Your tech support breaks it further - and you expect me to pay you or go a week with no phone? This was unacceptable. This is my only phone! It is the phone number on my resume, with which potential employers contact me. I need this device to work! To further my point, I missed a call from a potential employer not long after the tech bricked my phone - irony at its best. Google Voice saved the day, however, by delivering the voicemail to me from the internets. So, it becomes Google saving my ass - again.

I had no choice. While waiting for my new phone to come, I took to the forums. I posted questions in both Motorola's and T-Mobile's support forums. I'm somewhat proud that my thread at T-Mobile was indirectly linked to and referenced in a Boy Genius Report post. My thread at Motorola became the rallying ground for many other with this problem, and attracted the attention of a moderator, and eventually led to the creation of a fix. I felt like a real, live citizen of the internet. The Motorola forums, ultimately, had far more interesting discussion, so I largely ignored the T-mo forums after my initial posting. A moderator named Matt did a surprisingly decent job of keeping the masses updated, going so far as to take down info from all of us with problems to notify us when a fix was ready. He kept insisting that a fix would come "soon" - and while I doubted him (and Motorola, we have a history), a fix did arrive about 3 days after the initial post. Not lightning speed, but certainly respectable. Of course, by this time I had already grown inpatient and revived my beloved CLIQ using less savoury methods (namely, manually flashing the update again - worked like a charm).

My new CLIQ arrived yesterday, though I'm not sure how new it is, it seems to be jsut as shiny as my original one was out of the box, and it feels a mite more solid. I swapped my SIM, SD card, battery, and back to the new phone and shipped the old one back to T-mo to avoid absurd charges on my account. The new phone took the 1.3.18 update OTA with zero problems, and has been purring along happily ever since.

TL;DR: Motorola's update broke my phone, T-Mobile's tech support broke it more and took a few days to send me a new one (unacceptable) while Motorola showed some pretty good customer support and pushed a fix (hooray!). My new phone arrived and works great.

And with that episode behind me, I'd like to talk a little bit about a new application I finally decided to try out today, a preview of sorts. The application? A Homescreen replacement called SlideScreen that I discovered after reading an article on Lifehacker. I've only been using it for about half a day now, so I don't have much to say yet as far as long-term use, but I can say some things about it generally that I have noticed thus far.

The first thing I noticed about SlideScreen is that it is absolutely beautiful. My homescreens were replaced with a single sleek black screen that displays basic information in a very attractive way. By default, there are a great many things I don't care about on the screen (stocks? pfft), but some cleaning up and toying with the settings gave me a screen that was as close to what I want as SlideScreen can currently get: calls, texts, email, and calendar on top, the time/signal/battery/weather bar in the middle, and twitter updates below. This isn't ideal for me - yet. The developers seem very active and open to suggestions, though, so if my necessary features get included in the future, I can absolutely see the $7 pro version heading to my phone. So, in more depth below, the good, the bad, and the hope for improvement:

As I said, SlideScreen is beautiful. It takes Android's default homescreen and transforms it into a far sleeker, more polished interface that seems to ape HTC's TouchFLO in terms of dark colours and shiny textures. The use of bright colours on the left side to denote services is a wonderful touch, allowing my to quickly discern what (if anything) was afoot on my device. The center bar is the center of the interface, prominently displaying the date, time, signal strength, battery status, and weather. This bar can be dragged up or down to adjust how many of the top and bottom panels are visible at any given time. Dragging the bar all the way up or down will devote the whole screen to a seemingly-random service. I have not been able to find a setting that allows me to alter what services are displayed when I run the bar to either end of the screen. Through a bit of trial-and-error, I happened upon making email (Only Gmail is currently supported) fill the screen when the bar is at the bottom, and since Twitter is the only thing on the bottom half, it takes over when the bar is dragged up. This inability to choose is my largest complaint when it comes to SlideScreen: I can choose only what services are displayed. I can't select which should be on the top or bottom, I can't select my own colours, and I can't pick which two services get to fill the screen when I top or bottom-out the bar. This lack of customizability is one of two major issues with the application as it exists now. The developers, however, seem very active over at GetSatisfaction, so I have hope that the proram will improve as it grows.

The selection of services is somewhat slim: phone calls, SMS/MMS, Gmail, and calendars on the top half, and Twitter, Facebook, stocks, and Google Reader on the bottom. This selection of services is a good start, but there are a few more things that need to be added before I'll be willing to shell out for it: First up is Astrid, the amazing to-do list application that has been more-or-less running my life since I got my phone. Second is support for non-Gmail email, as my MSOE account is still a hotbed of activity that I'd like to see on my homescreen. Third, and easily the most important, is Google Voice support - as it stands, all my texts get ignored by SlideScreen, left for me to grab from the notification bar rather than shown to me with beautiful icons on gloriously shiny screens.

In addition to taking over the homescreen, Slidescreen also has it's own take on the application launcher, replacing the default Android drawer with a similar one of its own. This modified drawer is accessed by pressing the menu key once, with a second time bringing up the SlideScreen menu. The altered application launcher now has 8 static spots which can be set to launch any application in the drawer with a single press. They stay seated at the top of the screen as the bottom half scrolls. This added space makes SlideScreen just about as useful as the Android homescreen with its ability to drag shortcuts to the desktop, but where SlideScreen falls short is in search: by default, Android allows you to start typing the name of an application in order to make finding the right one faster. SlideScreen does away with this, and it has proved to be a hard habit for me to break, not to mention a significant source of frustration.

SlideScreen is a beautiful and functional homescreen replacement that has a little ways to go before it can truly replace the Android homescreen. Improvements in supported services, configuration options, and a few tweaks here and there will make it a killer application for any Android user. SlideScreen is available in the Android Market with both a Free version that has an ad at the bottom of the screen, and a $7 ad-free version.

Youthful Ignorance

2010-02-21T20:53:00.003-06:00

Oh, Hi there, kids.

So, this weekend I pulled out my "I'm young and irresponsible" card and took off for Chicago Friday afternoon to hit up my eighteenth (I think) Chicago Auto Show with my father and brother. It was, as it always is, an excellent afternoon. It isn't eh same wide-eyed wonder as it once was, however. Before this year, I've never been all that close to reality, but now that I am quickly approaching the prospect of having to become a responsible adult my view of the show has changed slightly. There was the standard fawning over the supercars well out of my price bracket, but there was a great deal more discussion of practical cars. It was like shopping rather than sightseeing in a way, though it was by no means less enjoyable.

As a sidenote, using Pelican cases as luggage makes you feel like a far more important person than you might otherwise be. Your suitcase has zippers? Mine is waterproof and has loud latches. What now.

As a result of my desertion this weekend, my Senior Design time looks pretty poor this week. I was hard on myself in the cycle report with the hopes that it will shield me from further punishment. I hope. I will undoubtedly be making up that lost time. I've already received a verbal lashing from a teammate

Saturday was my adventure day this weekend; the added bonus to a birthday-slash-Auto Show weekend at home. I ran errands in the morning, then popped on over to the Metra station to hit Chicago. I met Heather at the Panera on State and we walked back to Roosevelt to help Tim and Ms. C set up for TC's senior recital. Long story short, it was an excellent display of percussion skills and you missed out for having not been there. Following the show, I stood around and chatted with folks, most notably Kaitlin and Linda. Dinner was full of new experiences, including a smoothie-that's-not-a-smoothie thing that was curious but wonderful, the best eggroll I have ever tasted, and General Tso's chicken. This was followed by beer and Olympics, then a brisk walk back to the train, and a sleepy ride home.

The long and short of it is that it was well worth the consequences to head home this weekend. It was truly wonderful, and easily one of the better weekends I've had as of late. Excellent.

My blogposts have either been nonexistent or terrible lately. I apologize for my waning quality. Someday I'll have time to think again, I promise.

Forgotten

2010-02-18T22:58:00.001-06:00

Oh blogging, you've really fallen out of style for the short-attention-span, Twitter-connected, way-too-busy student types.

But really, things are ok. I've been running myself ragged between being sick, hunting for a job, and dealing with classes. Complain, complain - I know, trust me.

I've been thinking a lot about how I'll react to moving far away, which is silly since I haven't managed to get a job yet, be it far away or nearby. I'm continually hoping that the phone call will come, but I've gotten a little too used to getting jerked around. It's kind-of killing me desire to work at this place, but I'm not burned out yet. Soon, though. Soon. Then I'll have to go back to being disillusioned and unimpressed until the next awesome company comes along and wants to court me.

Speaking of which, I should apply at some more places. It's getting late in the year already. I'm not sure when that happened.

I find myself slipping back into old bad habits, only more intense. Is the relapse really supposed to be worse than the initial affliction?

I keep sitting down to write and realize that with all the reports and writing assignments I've been working on, I really have no words left. I've actually been getting writing and documentation assignments at work the past few weeks, which has been awesome - but considerably more work than running tickets. I'm happy about it though, as it's forcing me to finally get hold of the whole responsibility thing. It's crazy, I know. This year of working has been a lot different from last year; I don't feel the need to hide from everyone this year. I am, dare I say, making friends with and getting to know my coworkers better. It's been a fun year, I'm certain I'll miss it once I'm gone.

Class is class is class. I'm still worried about the whole grading thing: all my life, I have been given direct feedback on my performance on an assignment-by-assignment basis so I know how well I am doing, and how to adjust my performance accordingly. The working world - as I know it, anyhow - has no such system in place. Sure, quarterly reviews exist, but that gives me 13 weeks to screw things up. It's a fear of mine. How can I strive for the working-world equivalent of an A if I don't know what I'm getting now? It is a dilemma.

InDesign is an incredible program. Honestly, I love it. After using it to build my final user manual for Advanced Tech Writing, I'm in love with it. Of course, a lot of that love comes from all the help I got from my Dad and Heather, both of whom are pros with it by now. Still, amazing.

I've been working, albeit in little bits, on my Android app for my Mobile Applications class. It's not going to be anything exciting (it will fetch the top artists/tracks/albums for a given Last.fm user) but it's kind-of exciting to build. I'm calling the internet and it's responding to me. I still have to figure out how to parse Last.fm's XML using DOM, but that will happen early next week. Hooray Java? Something like that.

I wonder how Blogger integration works in Office 2010. It was kind-of neat in 2007, but I couldn't add labels, if I recall correctly.

The new Angels & Airwaves album, LOVE, is out. It is both free and pretty rad. Certainly worth a listen if you've a fan of AVA, and even if you aren't. They're coming through Milwaukee in March, I'm pretty sure I'll be at the show.

Alright. I should take off. Heading into Chicago tomorrow for the auto show, TC's senior recital on Saturday, and then it's back to MKE for finals week. Wish me luck.

Dear Blog,

2010-02-06T22:36:00.001-06:00

I have been way too busy as of late.

Love,

Mike.

Job

2010-01-26T22:36:00.003-06:00

I had a conversation with Tim yesterday about hobbies - and how we don't really have them anymore. I mean, sure I do photography - never mind the fact that I haven't had time to touch my cameras since New Years Eve. I play guitar, though I haven't had any time for that since winter break either. It's strange to think that I have no real hobbies at the moment because I simply don't have time and/or motivation to do anything that isn't school or work.

And with that soul-crushing thought, there is always more bad news. I found out today that the position I was interviewed for was put on hold by some higher power at the company, thus preventing the people with whom I interviewed from hiring me. It was almost worse this way, since it sounded like a "we would hire you but we can't," meaning that I was qualified for the job and would have actually gotten it had it not been mysteriously snatched away. They're passing my information on to two other branches of said company, though, so there's hope for that. Still, this was kind-of the dreamiest job so far. Oh well.

Orianthi is still amazing, I felt you should know. It makes me want to have time to play my guitar and learn how to actually play solos. Someday, right?

Schooling

2010-01-25T21:48:00.003-06:00

I should be working on my networking lab right now, but something horrible has seemingly befallen my development board so I'm dead in the water as far as testing goes. I was even being productive and proactive for a change. But it's been a strange week so far (and it is only Monday evening).

The real excitement was last week on Friday. Right now, I'm on pins and needles waiting to hear back from the company with which I interviewed on Friday. Of the three interviews I have been through for post-graduation jobs (Yes, only 3 so far. It's early, I don't graduate for several months), this was the first one that I came out of feeling excited. I spent the whole day touring the building and talking with my interviewers, who happened to be other engineers at said company. I can say with all sincerity that it was an enjoyable day: I got to wear a suit (always a plus), look at a ton of neat gadgets, and answer questions that I knew the answer to. It was fantastic, and really only stressful for the first 5 minutes or so. I should hear back some time this week, so if I start sounding all depressed in my tweeting, you'll know I got turned down. Still, I'm feeling confident because, as mentioned above (and in stark contrast to my last interview), I knew the answers to the technical questions.

Finding a job isn't the only thing on my mind, of course, but it may as well be. School has become increasingly annoying. Not difficult, but irritating. Grating. Tedious. Painfully so. I don't feel like I am doing work to learn things anymore, but instead attending some sort of daycare for young adults who do not yet have jobs and like to give $34k/yr to an institution. I know that's not true, but there are days that feel like it. I could just be bitter about the 10 hours in the last 2 days I've spent trying to get this networking lab to work. This morning started with one of the most painful-to-sit-through hours of my school career, in which we got yelled at by our senior design advisor. The funny thing was that 3/4ths of us weren't actually in any trouble - we just had to sit there and endure the yelling. And the bipolarity, since our advisor kept stopping his tirade to ask us random questions about the status of our project. It was both curious and painful. First thing on a Monday morning. Oh boy.

I've been slowly finding new music as of late; lurking on Reddit today netted me another rad artist to listen to: Orianthi. She is both a singer/songwriter and an incredible guitarist. Her newest CD, Believe, is also pretty wonderful if you like Kelly Clarkson-esque pop and rad guitar solos. And I mean, who doesn't? You should.

Somehow I have fewer classes this quarter yet I have less time. No idea how that happened.

Google

2010-01-18T14:26:00.003-06:00

So I googled myself, just to see what happens. Turns out that my blog was the only thing on the first page of hits - and anything else related to me was way down the line. You could find my LinkedIn profile, but I'm ok with prospective employers finding that. So, I told Blogger to stop displaying my full name. And I removed my plain-text email address from my profile. What was I thinking there? I may never know.

I'm trying to hide from the internet, I guess. I'm not doing well, since it doesn't look too hard to connect my name to the alias poco153, and googling that shows every web service or forum I've signed up for since forever. I'm actually somewhat pleased with the first page of hits, since Google picks up my Twitter account, blog, and Last.fm profile. Those are ok things to learn about me, I guess. I wouldn't mind having my gdgt profile on the first page, but I'm not complaining.

See, I'm googling myself because I want a job, so I figure I should at least try to look good.

Innocent

2010-01-06T23:16:00.005-06:00

I started a song way back in May 2009, and with a little compositional help from TC, I managed to get it finished over break. The original post is here, but I've revised the words a little. For your benefit and mine (more mine, for archival purposes) here is the latest revision of the lyrics:

There's quick kisses everywhere and
hidden lingering stares and
She's showing off herself
but not how he wants her
Innocent yet grown and aged now
desires plain and simple
It's not a move to use her,
just a basic need for closeness

Just open up
don't be so afraid to
show off yourself
it's just you and me now
Don't you believe
I won't let you down?
I won't let you down
Oh so innocent

He trusts her trusts him so what's the problem
but her arms stay clamped down at her sides and eyes stay on them
the world is watching, wondering what it's all about and
they're sleeping separately even though they know it's not what they wanted

There's lines drawn tightly around what
is right and what they'll call wrong
with no regard for the
customs that dictate
Their contact's strictly governed
his eyes stay locked onto the ground
act like they're being watched
by everyone else.

If you're interested, a [very?] rough video is here.

Flat

2010-01-02T23:46:00.003-06:00

I'm attempting to write an Android application on a deadline. I am on this incredibly fast back-and-forth between loving it and hating it.

On the love side is how neat everything is: when code is all laid out for me to observe and modify, it's amazing how quickly I can throw up a simple UI or button handler.

On the hate side is the complexity. I've spent more time than I am proud of trying to figure out how to display another view on top of my current screen. I've got it now (sort-of), but the new screen has no button handlers, and I'm not quite sure how to get back to the original screen. I should have starter earlier, yes, but I'm not sure I would be much further. My time is spent 90% looking things up and trying to figure out how to adapt them to my use versus 10% coding - which would be fine if I had more time. I'm throwing in the towel for tonight and sleeping, and working on my essay first tomorrow. Supposedly my professor is an easy grader so long as I get something close to working and explain what I've been doing. That I can handle.

It's strange to be back at school. I rearranged some things while unpacking, such as pulling my dresser out of the back of my closet and putting it somewhere I can actually open the drawers. We'll see how it turns out and if Tim complains about it. My shoe/stuff rack is now in the back of the closet, and I think it fits much more nicely there. I may try moving my desk around to see what I can do about that situation as well.

But all this is just an attempt to distract myself from a combination of homework and loneliness. Just like blogging right now, actually. I'm just frustrated about my own inability to get things done in a timely manner. I was too busy not sleeping and daydreaming all of break, to the point of fault. I was trying too hard to relax and ended up doing more harm than good in that department. But isn't that how things work now? We work ourselves to death with the promise of a vacation, then waste the vacation working ourselves to death trying to feel relaxed?

I've almost accepted the fact that I have become awful at getting things done. I have so much trouble with motivation lately; I'm just not excited about anything. Except the outlandish ideas that exist only in my daydreams, and those are only exciting because they occur in my own version of a utopia. I need to find something to make me get excited again, preferably about school work. It would be nice to want to try again. I remember what that was like.

But I should sleep. Excuse any typos, I'm still getting used to my new keyboard.

Would you look at that? Day two of the year and I've already given up. Disillusionment comes earlier every year.

The New Year

2010-01-01T16:07:00.003-06:00

Hey, it's 2010 now. Strange how all my problems from the past year are still here. Stranger still how the things I love are still the same too. People resolve things at the start of the year becasue it seems like as good a place as any to start. There's no real magical significance to the switchover.

Except that we now live in the future.

This past year was interesting. Last new years eve was spent with better friends, but was as a whole more miserable. I moped my way through the beginning of the year until March, after which the emotional deficit started refilling, albeit slowly. Summer brought my first real engineering internship along with a real office experience, and the change of living on my own in the city year-round. During the summer, I delved deeper into my two favourite hobbies, picking up my first electric guitar and amp and upgrading my camera to one that has allowed me to improve further. The transition from summer to fall led me to question my future and wonder what I really wanted to do. And now in Winter, I am worrying-yet-optimistic about finding a job and existing post-graduation.

There were no tragedies that I can recall, and no great moments of self-realization and fortune. I lost money to the bank collapse, but I made new friends and learned new lessons. I moved from home to the dorms to my own apartment.

I've done almost none of my homework assigned for break. I guess that's what tomorrow is for. I'm heading back to Milwaukee tomorrow, so I can get something done at school Saturday night and Sunday. There are things here that make me want to stay - people, really - but I should go and work on my future or something similarly prophetic.

I blew right through my December deadline, which, I suppose, goes to show that God enjoys confusing me and not aligning my relationships with a previously observed pattern. By the end there, I really just wanted something to happen to keep the pattern in check - I was pretty "meh" on the whole relationship thing - but I love patterns, especially when observed in things as significant to me as my own history. That sounded more egotistical than I meant it to be.

The end of this year has reminded me how things turn to shit quite quickly when I give up on myself. Less shock and anger, more shame. It's all supposed to be a learning experience, though, right? I'm supposed to take my shame and wear it and learn from it. I don't like sharing, though, so I take my shame and hide it and stress and coerce myself into learning from it. It's like a shame spiral, but going upwards, not down. A shame helicopter, then.

But it's not all bad. It's 2010 now (oh-ten?) and supposedly that means we get tabula rasa. I like tossing fancy phrases into things like this, it makes me feel more accomplished as a writer somehow. I'm not sure my sentence makes sense, though. Tabula rasa is Latin for "blank slate." Should it be "we all get a tabula rasa"? That doesn't sound nearly as deep.

I shot family portraits and tried my hand at candids. I did pretty ok, actually, all things considered. I did learn that bouncing a flash into a red and white umbrella will seriously screw up white balance, but that having red-tinted photos is better than having harsh shadows. I learned that, at least for me, the key to shooting indoor candids is f/2, auto-ISO, +1/3ev, and the vivid profile. The thin DOF and bright exposures made the colours pop, and the D90's wonderful high-ISO performance makes is possible to keep the shutter speed reasonable. I can't make big prints of the shots, of course, but for 4x6s or posting on Facebook, they are more than fine. I'm pleased, anyhow.

I also learned that having a sling-style strap helps too. Having my Nikon strap around my neck or wrapped around my wrist meant that I had to be more careful of the camera or lose a hand. Neither are much help when setting/cleaning up from holidays. I got a BlackRapid RS-4 for Christmas and it proved to be far nicer than I ever could have hoped. I can leave the camera on but tuck it to my side or behind my back to give me two free hands and no concerns about bumping into things. It also allows me to look less conspicuous and catch people more off their guard. I'm quite pleased with it.

But this has degraded into taking about pictures. That's not a bad thing, but I have other things I should be doing. Like all my homework.

Happy new year.

The Conflict

2009-12-23T21:32:00.002-06:00

I feel like I am constantly in conflict: On one hand, I am a huge Microsoft fan. They've always been good to me, and they continue to make life easier for me as both a developer and a consumer. On the other hand, I love Google. They have taken over just about every aspect of my life, now extending to the one device I rely on most. I feel like there is some conflict in this position, that somehow I shouldn't be committed to both sides of the fight.

That said, Google is clearly dominating in the mobile market. I'm still quite in love with Android and the community Google has built around the OS. I found out this morning that the CLIQ was successfully rooted, so even if Motorola decides to abandon me (again), I should have a route to getting 2.x, if not at least 1.6. Really all I want is Google Maps with navigation, but that's only for 1.6 and above. I'm willing to trust Motorola for now, but I'm hoping they'll hurry up and push out a 1.6 update for MOTOblur. It's been out for a while now, and I can't imagine the codebase for blur needs to change all that much.

In things not relating to the huge crush I have on my phone, my car came back from the dealer today with a brand new back windshield. Apparently it is easier to replace the whole thing rather than repair the defroster, which I guess I'd believe. There are masking tape band-aids around the panel, and I have to let the glue finish setting before I can take them off.

I haven't much else to say, really, since I haven't been doing much of note. I really should get my homework done so I'm not doing it all the Sunday before school starts again. Oops.

New Phone I: Gushing

2009-12-18T16:23:00.004-06:00

Let's talk phones again. Or is it still? Regardless.

I bought a new phone today, and it has been wonderful. I drove out to the T-Mobile store this morning around 10, and intended to play with the CLIQ for a while and make a tough decision between it and the G1. As it turned out, I walked into the store and played with the CLIQ for about 5 minutes before falling in love with it. The cute saleslady (woman? girl?) approached me midway into my love affair with the device and asked if I needed help. I explained to her that I have done research and I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted. Amazingly, the only thing she tried to up-sell me to was phone insurance. It was a fantastic experience to be sure. The signing-up / porting / phone buying process was quick, painless, and actually enjoyable. I handed over my information (and Sprint account number), she typed the data in, and we chatted for a few minutes while it went through, then I got my phone. I was told to wait 24-ish hours for the number port, but I still had WiFi and Data, I just couldn't receive calls.

I set up MOTOBLUR and all the associated accounts, which was also a surprisingly friendly process. Motorola seems to have done their homework - the MotoBLUR interface elemets seem well-built. I played with the Android Market and tested out the Google Voice app and SIPdroid, which are both quite slick. I changed my wallpaper a few times. Mostly I just sat and played with the phone for hours on end.

The CLIQ is heavy. It feels very solid, and the sliding mechanism is no different. It has a very satisfying *shuck* when it pops into position, and there is very little wiggle when open or closed. The Android implementation seems quite snappy as well - I haven't been left waiting much. There are the times where the phone is overloaded (multitasking, downloading, and updating things simultaneously), but for the most part, it is wonderful.

The contacts manager is a bit unwieldy, since it defaults to a list of ALL my contacts - Facebook, Google, Exchange, Last.FM(?), Twitter, etc. - even those that have no phone number associated. I was concerned at first, but then realized I could bypass the whole mess and show contacts from a single service at a time (Google!). Similarly, blur's "Happenings" applications aggregates all the status updates from all the networks I added. Inside the application proper, I can filter by service, unfortunately, though, the gadget for the home screen does not allow such filters, making it next to useless for me, who has nothing but disdain for Facebook.

I love this phone - and so far, I love T-Mobile. Service at home isn't as strong as Sprint was, but WiFi makes that less of a problem. The thing I love most is the lack of a contract: I go month-to-month with no obligation, and I own my phone outright. No prorated early termination fees here.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the CLIQ later. So far, my major complaint is that the keyboard isn't perfect - it's a little mushy. But that's about it for now. I downloaded the latest firmware first thing when I got home, so I can't comment on battery savings / screen accuracy except to say that both seem to be doing well so far.

Slayed

2009-12-13T21:54:00.003-06:00

Oh, hello everyone.

I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a few weeks now, and I don't think I've mentioned it much except in passing. It is phenomenal. Almost Firefly-quality television except 7 seasons long. I haven't been speeding through Buffy like I did with The Office, mostly because Buffy is an hour-long show, unlike the bite-sized episodes of The Office. It's harder to fit a 43-minute episode into little gaps. Also, I haven't been rushing through them. It's been a struggle for inattentive me, but I've been making an effort to pay close attention - and it has been rewarding. It is easy to see why this show did so well - and it makes it all the more frustrating the Firefly, a show by the same people with the same style, got canned so soon after its conception.

Buffy is surprisingly deep, not to mention scary and disturbing. I am currently two episodes away from the end of season 4, and already it has been interesting to see the show turn darker and darker, and tackle more taboo topics as the writers get bolder. It seems, at points, that the goal of certain episodes is to alienate the viewers, to make them feel as uncomfortable as possible. At other points, it seems like Joss and his writers have personal vendettas against their characters. Never before have I seen a show hate its characters so much, and the show is better for it. People end up in horrible (and horrific) situations with some regularity, not to mention the number of folks that meet their demise on the show.

I'm actually somewhat excited to finish all 7 seasons and then start again - the perspective will most certainly add something to the early episodes. If you do watch the show, be sure to stay away from Wikipedia - there are spoilers everywhere (as expected), and I manged to find a few things I didn't want to know. I have been very fortunate to have a sort-of Buffy guide in Heathertooth, who has been very helpful in indoctrinating me.

But I'm supposed to be doing homework. To be fair, I got a fair amount finished today, I just have use cases and other such nonsense to write for my Mobile Apps lab. Speaking of that, I've switched my focus from BlackBerry to Android since, well, I've already started to make preparations for the change in cell carriers and my switch to an Android phone. I'm actually kind-of excited about the application I want to make, so it would be nice to be able to use it.

I was supposed to do laundry today, but I forgot. Tomorrow, then.

The Hunt

2009-12-11T22:54:00.003-06:00

So all this and I'm still cruising right toward unemployment.

I know, I know - I don't really have anything to worry about, it's just hard to be positive for a little while after getting turned down (again). To be honest, I'm not surprised: I'm not the CS major they were looking for. The rejection did manage to kill my motivation for the day, and as such, I have gotten just about zero homework done today. I pasted some graphs in my lab notebook, and that was it. I've still got a ton to do between now and Monday.

I've decided I'm buying a phone, dammit. It will either be a CLIQ or a G1 on T-Mobile's new Even More Plus plan. Yes, the phone is pricey right at the outset, but I will (a) be on a GSM network for full phone-changing freedom and (b) not be under any contract of any sort. Yes, this is sort-of like admitting gadget addiction, but it's been over 2 years since my last phone entered service, and it's starting to age noticeably. But all this talk of phones has a purpose on the original theme of this post, I swear.

I've kind-of decided I should be pursuing a job in the intersection of my hobbies and my professional skills. That leaves me looking in cell phones (RIM and Motorola?), cameras (Kodak), and music (who knows). We'll see how that hunt goes. I've also started thinking about applying for tech writing jobs. The only problem I'm running into there is that I don't have a portfolio of work since I haven't really done much yet. That will change after this quarter, though, so it may become a more viable option as time passes.

I got confirmation that I will have a ride home from school for winter break (thanks Dad!) so that I can bring my guitar/amp/cabinet home with me. I need something other than the internet to do, so it will be nice to have some gear home with me.

Crap, I have a lot to do: I have to finish the post-lab work, do the networking homework, and work on the mobile apps lab. I really should have gotten more done. Too late now, I guess.

Battle of the Phones

2009-12-09T17:59:00.006-06:00

I am in the midst of one of the most difficult decisions of my life for the next two or so years: What phone do I buy? I've narrowed things down to two options, but I'll try to walk you through my decision-making process up to this point.

There are a ton of "pretty good" phones out there, but very few are "good", while ven fewer are downright awesome. I set out with a few criteria: I wanted a physical QWERTY keyboard, I wanted Google Voice integration, and I didn't want to pay more than I had to. Looking at plans, I set my ceiling at $60. This gave me 500 minutes, unlimited texting, and unlimited data on either Sprint or T-Mobile. This meant no Droid, but I wasn't too heartbroken. Nothing else that is exclusive to either AT&T or Verizon interests me in the least.

I knew I didn't want to deal with the pit of horrible that has been my Windows Mobile experience. Countless reviews have stated again and again that WinMo, even at 6.5, is not ready for primetime. My phone list looked something like this:
Sprint: Samsung Moment, BlackBerry Tour, Palm Pre, Palm Pixi
T-Mobile: T-Mo G1, Motorola CLIQ, BlackBerry Curve 8900, BlackBerry Bold

Right away, I struck the Curve and the Bold from the ballot: Sprint has superior coverage in my experience, so if I'm going to end up with a BlackBerry, I would go with the Sprint Tour. Simple decision. Next on the chopping block was the CLIQ. While it is a solid device, the plan I chose on T-mobile requires me to buy my phone outright - there's no special contract pricing, so $400 for a phone based on a 2-year-old reference design seemed to be a bit too much.

Sprint's decisions were a bit harder. I visited my neighborhood Sprint store over Thanksgiving break to play with the devices, and I went back to another store later with a few friends. The Palm Pre, formerly the object of my desire, was the first to go. I couldn't stand the keyboard - it is too flat and too cramped for me to feel good about it, especially when compared to some of the other contenders. The Pixi seems nice, but it is almost too small. Also, the device is a little underpowered, so it was out. The Samsung Moment is currently in question. The demo phone I played with at the Sprint store was slow - embarrassingly so. I was able to stay 4 or 5 characters ahead of the display when writing text messages. Even my ancient Motorola Q isn't that slow. Considering the beefed-up processor in the Moment, I was extremely disappointed by how laggy the device was. To make matters worse, the phone hasn't been cracked open yet, and Samsung isn't helping out any. I read through a number of forums about trying to break the Moment open to allow new ROMs to be flashed, but nobody had any success. This is a dealbreaker for me: If your factory OS image is going to be unusable, at least allow other people to fix it for you.

After the dust cleared, there were two options left on the table: Sprint's BlackBerry Tour and T-Mobile's G1 (with a modded ROM, of course).

The tour's keyboard is to die for, and the screen is beautiful as well. It is a snappy device with just about everything I want with the notable exception of WiFi. The G1 is a bit older, but some of the available ROMs really bring it to life. Slicker Google Voice integration is a plus, but I have to buy the phone off-contract.

Furthermore, there is the battle of the carriers: I am currently with Sprint, so staying there would alleviate any issues with number porting or contract moving. Of course, in this plan, I would be signed up with Sprint for another 2 years. T-mobile makes me buy the phone off-contract, and I would have to go through the pain of number porting, but the plan is month-to-month with no contract or ETF to sign. Also, I get the benefit of being on a GSM network, thus allowing me to change my phone whenever I feel like it (say, when the Nokia N900 finally shows up).

So I'm stuck. Do I get the business communicator on the path of least resistance, or do I brave the smaller service grid and get the fun phone? My reliance on MSOE's exchange servers will have to drop off pending my graduation, so perhaps Exchange support isn't as important.

WiFi tethering with the G1 is tempting, but the Tour's keyboard really is that good. I want to see the Google Voice applications on both devices for myself. I got a look at the Android app on video, but I'd still like to tinker with it. I've played with both devices quite a bit in person, and I am quite sure I would be happy with either. The keyboard on the G1 is a little awkward, thanks to the chin, but the onscreen keyboards for quick input make up for it.

But now that I've revisited my browsing history for this post, I'm curious about the CLIQ again - I haven't played with one, and T-mo has an interest-free installment plan to let me split up the payments of the phone. Is it worth it? I have no idea.

So what say you, fair readers? What should I do?

Interviews I

2009-12-07T22:32:00.003-06:00

My big, scary interview was today. It was quite a day.

Yesterday afternoon I train-ed over to MKE and hopped on a plane to MSP, where I got to experience a Boston Coach. There was a dude in the airport holding a sign with my name on it. I followed him to a fancy leather-upholstered Lincoln, which drove me to the hotel where I spent the night is a surprisingly ritzy room. That is, there were 5 pillows on the giant bed, and there was a hot tub just sort of chilling in one corner of the room. I used all 5 pillows. I did not use the hot tub.

This morning I woke up from my toasty (and gigantic) bed and suited up. I met up with some of the other candidates for the job(s) in the lobby, and we were picked up and taken to the company's regional HQ. We toured two of the buildings and got a quick look at the machines, and then it was off to interviews. Lots and lots of interviews.

I could probably be more descriptive were I more awake, but this will have to do. The first four interviews went well. I had good discussions, I was able to provide answers to most of the questions, and I was able to talk my way through most of the questions I couldn't answer. All of the interviewers really seemed excited to be there, and excited to meet me, and excited about the program I am applying for. They seemed happy - much more so than last summer. The fifth interview was less good, but I don't think it went horribly. I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how I would solve a sudoku puzzle in code, but one of the two interviewers seemed ok with it. I can't feel too bad; I'm not a software guy.

The day was interesting. There were the five interviews, but the interviewers stayed with us all day, even during lunch and the breaks throughout the day. This meant that I was onstage all day - there were always eyes watching. It was a bit stressful, but I did my best to be casual and social and, well, myself.

I'm extremely tired. We were rushed to the airport following the interview wrap-up, and now I am back in my apartment. I'm sure I will have more intelligent things to say about the whole process once I have slept. It was interesting, to say the least. I'm supposed to send the HR manager an email tonight or tomorrow with my thoughts on the process. Seeing as how I haven't really been able to put a sentence together in this blogpost, I'm thinking I'll email him tomorrow.

Look at all those contractions. I really do need to sleep.

On a side note, when I got back this evening, there were no fewer than 18 "notifications" on Facebook. Thank you all for your support, I appreciate it!

Sounds of the Season

2009-12-04T23:20:00.002-06:00

Did you know Taylor Swift released a Christmas album? I didn't. I learned this. I love it. It, and Relient K's Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand are really the only Christmas music I can handle outside of the three day Christmas holiday. I'm very scrooge-like, I know. It's just that I don't like Christmas music all that much.

I was somewhat productive on this, my weekday without class. I've hesitated to print out copies of my resume and references for the upcoming interview, but I updated both documents, made phone calls to arrange transportation, and bought my train tickets, so I'd say I'm getting ready. I'll print and pack tomorrow. I should also make sure I have the full gamut of phone numbers that I might need. Those will get into my phone tomorrow too. I need these lists, they put me at ease.

My desk is getting cluttered again, but I can't bring myself to clean it. That would require effort.

Buffy is still great.

I should sleep, tomorrow will be a day. Smartphone shopping/browsing in the morning, then interview prep, and then the homecoming game. Hopefully we'll get some more snow or something. Hockey will be a nice diversion, though.

Shell

2009-12-01T22:49:00.002-06:00

I have been beating my head against some invisible wall for the past 2 or 3 weeks trying to write something, trying to get motivated enough to write. It hasn't been working.

I've been worried, you see: I have this interview. It's just one interview with one company, but it my head, I've made it into some insurmountable thing that is the ultimate end of my life. I have no idea why. I mean, I've already been turned down for one job, so from here on out, it's all uphill, right? It should be. I'm freaked out because I have to travel someplace new to interview. I'm scared because I just found out the the process consists of 5 different interviews one right after the other. I'm worried because I didn't know the answers to every question asked of my on the technical phone interview. I don't know what I would study to get better. I'm scared of this job, and it's affecting me everywhere else.

I tied myself for lowest grade received in college with a second BC this quarter, this time in Computer Architecture II. I keep reminding myself that, according to my grades, that is about an 83% in the class, it's just the grading scale here that is crazy. I haven't been able to convince myself yet. I feel disappointed. I'm doing less school this quarter, down two classes from my previous overloaded quarter. I have no class on Friday for the first time in my college career, it is a strange feeling. I didn't schedule myself for work, though I may end up going in to pick up some extra Christmas cash. Gifts and all that, you know how it goes. I moved one of my labs today so that my only class on Wednesday is at 7pm. I'll work all day. Not that I have so much to do. With my actual boss gone, nobody really knows what to do with me. I help out where I can, but I feel awful useless.

I got a suit for this interview. I mean, I got it because of the interview, but it will be for lots of things - anything I need a suit for, really. It is charcoal and pinstriped and, honestly, I feel like a big kid wearing it. It's like dressing up as a kid, it makes you believe you are so much more mature since you look the part. I'll be so much sharper because I look so much better. Confidence comes from the clothes. I only with I could polish my shoes better. At least I can tie my own tie.

I got my Dad's old Canon AE-1 cleaned and re-sealed over break, and I attempted to shoot a roll of film at Spring Valley before learning that I have gotten so lost in the digital age that I didn't remember how to load a roll of film. My SD cards just click into place, but the film needed to be unrolled and tucked and fed and aligned just so. Shooting the old camera had the effect I wanted though: I slowed down, I thought about composition, I focused then recomposed, I checked exposure. It was marvelous. Sure, it took getting used to, but it was so much less... rushed. I feel like my digital camera rushes me sometimes: "Here, I've got the exposure, now go! Shoot at 4.5fps if you like! Just go! Shoot more! There is plenty of space!" Instead of the twenty-eight carefully framed shots I thought I took, I only got about six before it got too dark. I'm not so upset, though. I tried to remember to double all my shots with digital anyhow, though I felt like I did a better job shooting with the film body. Also, I was right: shooting with a fully manual camera felt better. Having to wind the film made me check to see if I really wanted to take a shot. It wasn't like the loud, grinding winder in my N2000. I think I'll be picking up a Nikon FE or FM soon enough, along with some AI glass to complete the look. I like the AE-1, and I have no intention of dropping it from my kit, but I'd like a body with aperture priority (the AE-1 shoots manual or shutter priority only), and one that will work with all my other F-mount bodies.

Can I apply for tech writing jobs with only a minor? I might try. I wish I could look into the future and see what I'm going to want to do. I want to know.

I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer as per a recommendation from the Heathertooth. I expected a girl, bubbly show. What I got was scary things from the depths of Joss Whedon's mind. I love it. It is cheesy enough to be funny, but scary enough to keep me up at night. Joss is a master of creeping me out, and he has shown such disdain for his characters even in the first three seasons. I am excited to watch more. I respect Joss Whedon even more now, which I was not sure could happen.

I had been having trouble writing, and I don't know why. I started a dozen or so blog posts before finally being able to write more than a sentence or two. Maybe it was the brilliant episode of Buffy I just watched. Maybe it is Transatlanticism playing. I don't know what made me able to write again, but I'm happy for it.

I'm in Advanced Technical Writing this quarter as part of my TC minor and I am excited. I'll be learning some InDesign, and I'll be doing page layouts and crazy grammar and writing tech docs. I can't wait. My professor will be taking off points in the class if we misspell things in emails to her. I can't express my joy with this class.

I am also in Mobile Application Development, which I am less excited about. Not that it won't be fun, but I want to write an application for a modern OS, so anything I do will be emulator-bound unless I manage to buy a new phone soon. At least it will get me back in the software mindset. I've been thinking in C and Assembly far too long, I need some Java back in my head.

I got an email this morning. I didn't understand its purpose. Something about nostalgia and past love and whatnot. It annoyed me. I was not exactly kind in my response. I was firm, and I felt happy about it all day, so I'm going to assume I was correct. I can't being myself to delete the conversation in Gmail, because I was so candid and honest. It felt good.

I should sleep, though. I have a long day of feeling useless tomorrow. Two hours of Senior Design, six of work, then seventy-five minutes of class in the evening.

The world is slowly freezing again. All we can do is freeze with it.

Filler

2009-11-21T22:25:00.002-06:00

Blog. I have abandoned you for weeks now.

It has been a long few weeks. Tenth week and Finals were challenging at best, and nearly impossible at worst. But they are through now, and I am home. Sitting.

I haven't much to say.

Mythology

2009-11-04T22:50:00.002-06:00

There are precious few things I recall from high school English classes. Mostly just tidbits, silly things about Hamlet or grammar rules.

There is one thing that has always stuck with me, though, in a deeper sense than just literature or grammar. I remember discussing the Greek myth with the dudes in the labyrinth with the minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus (or so says Wikipedia). Or maybe it was The Odyssey? Now that I think about it, I bet it was the Odyssey. Anyhow, in the myth, a princess betrays her father, the king, in order to help the main character. The hero takes her help, then promptly ditches her. As a class, we couldn't understand the betrayal - wasn't it dishonourable to disgrace someone who saved your life? Then the teacher explained it to us: She betrayed someone she loved in order to save the hero. Why, then, should the hero trust someone who is prone to betrayal? If she is willing to betray bloodlines, would mere lust be enough to prevent her future betrayal?

This is one of the statements that has completely changed my outlook on the world. It is such a cynical thought, to be sure, but it has been my experience. The only people who betray are those capable of betrayal. I dated a girl for a while before learning that she had left her previous boyfriend for me. It threw up red flags. It was like I was sitting in that English class again, all alone, with the same lecture. I ignored it. Care to take a guess what happened? Betrayal. I was tossed aside. Oops. The Greeks must have had something there, eh?

It is interesting to watch and see how well these ancient historical texts (translated to English, of course) reflect things. In all the things that have changed over the thousands of years that we have been here, human nature still revolves around the same set of behaviours. Shakespeare (if it really was him) and the lot have been able to predict exactly how modern people will react. It is uncanny, that unchanging core of humanity that we all try to deny, either by trying to be perfect or trying to be complete assholes. Our mediocre, predictable, selfish core scares us to death, and we feel a need to escape it.

So we indulge ourselves, our so-called needs: we try to be "nice" and we join groups and causes to make the world "better" somehow. We claim we are overcoming our natural selfishness, our predictable selves. Really, all we end up doing is the equivalent of buying carbon credits: We're still pumping the world full of shit, but we do nice things and hope they cancel out.

We're still the same lying, cheating, murdering people that populated the Earth thousands of years ago. If we manage to not kill ourselves off, I'd wager a bet that the people here thousands of years in the future will be just as selfish and corrupt.

Don't take it personally, it's just a trait of the species.

Cyclical Analysis

2009-10-28T22:32:00.005-05:00

Personal preferences, as with most things, are cyclical. We all have phases of liking one thing or another, inevitably cycling between a few things on a variable cycle time.

Right now, I am in a headphone phase. I go back and forth, usually a few weeks (or months) preferring to listen to anything and everything through speakers, then I have a few days like this, where I have to have headphones. I don't have any expensive stuff here, so it's not a quality issue. Right now, I am telling myself that I am preferring headphones because of the stereo separation and isolation working together to give me higher fidelity. Ah yes, high quality $20 headphones. Plantronics may know how to make a good set of cans, but I doubt there's much to the speakers tucked inside my headset. Still, I am stuck on headphones for this week it seems, so I started to wonder why. I have been feeling tired, and as such, less social and more easily frustrated. I have been having more difficulty than usual sitting in a chair like a normal person, rather I have always had to tuck one or both legs under me to be comfortable more often than normal (I think). The draw of headphones could certainly be the seclusion they afford me.

I live in a relatively small apartment with two other people, one of whom is (almost) always pissed off at someone, something, or, as has been the case more often than not, everything. I will allow you to field a guess as to which two of those three roommates must share a bedroom. If your answer was the angry guy and me, you were correct. Not that it is insufferable, of course - he isn't a bad guy, just an angry one (lots of short bursts of expletives coming from otherwise silent rooms over, well, we never find out). I am not known for my emotional backbone, that is, I commonly find my emotions swayed by whatever is around me, be it music, movies, or other people fuming about something. And so I become angry, stressed out, and otherwise unhappy. My shift in preference toward headphones, and therefore seclusion, could be related to a resurgence in the angry roommate's anger.

School is getting close to a set of finals, and while I know they are not bad, I have been worrying about my grades. Studying, homework, projects, and the constant self-nagging that I should find a job before I am unemployed come May has been pressing down on me lately. I have been keeping up without incident, though, and I haven't lost any sleep over any homework yet (though I did miss work, for which I apologize). Even work, which may as well be school at this juncture, has been pretty lightweight, with me finding myself without work far more often than overwhelmed with it.

Of course, it could just be me pining for a set of Sennheiser HD-595s. I'm open to that, too.

Ingrid Michaelson

2009-10-26T23:07:00.002-05:00

The Ingrid Michaelson show last night was amazing.

I went into it feeling tired, worn out from the week prior which was not the best, a fact which was not improved by the monumental amount of bitching I did. Walking over to Turner Hall with Tim, I was lethargic and irritable and not feeling very nice at all. From the first strum of the ukulele, I was energized somehow.

I have this reaction to live music a lot, I don't know why I haven't started to expect it. I have this concert high that I get almost every time I attend a show (the second Cartel show and the recent Mae show excepted). Ingrid was perfect. On a technical level, the band was eerily accurate, playing every single note as though it were part of a perfect first take. Even the breakdowns and added pieces were spot-on, nobody ever went amiss. This show had the best sound I have ever heard at a concert: I was sitting in a hall of people with huge ceilings and unforgiving wall coverings and I felt as though I was listening to the CD in a perfectly balanced room. It was phenomenal how well-balanced each instrument and voice were. Nothing overpowered anything, and the right instruments came through at the right times.

The band was equally wonderful. I haven't ever seen that kind of audience interaction. Ingrid, as we know, is an excellent songwriter with a beautiful voice, but I could never have predicted her comedic ability; if the audience was not deeply engrossed in listening to a song, they were laughing along with the commentary and stories coming from Ingrid. She is both polite and hilariously irreverent, and adorable to boot.

As for the audience, we sang when asked, we clapped when they told us to, and we cheered and clapped as the band "hid" onstage after their set rather than walking back to the dressing room, waiting, then coming back out. It was our choice - hiding received the lion's share of the cheers from the audience. The band's dynamic was incredible to watch, especially when the members would switch instruments at will, in one case leaving Ingrid on the drums in a manner reminiscent of my last Hush Sound show when the band similarly traded positions, placing Greta behind the drum set.

I can't say enough good things about the show. It's coloured my whole week, I think, and I'm grateful for it. I'm just... happy all of a sudden.

If you ever get the chance to go see Ingrid Michaelson and you don't take it, then you should feel sufficiently depressed, since you will have missed out on one of the most entertaining musical acts rolling around the US today.

Winter

2009-10-24T21:17:00.003-05:00

It's like winter in this city
cars line the streets like metal snow banks
cold air whips through narrow streets
people float, aimlessly like snowflakes
every one different
just like we were told as children.

Stoplights blink at the rolled-up streets
sirens echo from miles away
from a place I am not, and may never be
the almost-barren trees rustle quietly
nearly silent, save the last few leaves

the night leaks in through the cracks in my door
I can see the lights through the gaps
it battles against the creaking heaters
the sloshing water
the steam that squeals.

It's like winter in this city
everything is dying slowly
or going to sleep off the cold
fall's beauty is decaying
but the snow has not yet come to cover

Playing Observations

2009-10-22T23:12:00.003-05:00

I was in a horrible mood today, then I was in an ok mood, then I was back to a horrible mood, and now, for some reason, I am both exhausted and feeling somewhat happy. I only mention this because I came back with the intent of working on my song that I spent some time with and realized I was not feeling nearly vindictive enough to write it. I tried thinking of something catchy to work on a less-unhappy song with, but "Steady as She Goes" was stuck in my head, so that was a lost endeavour from the start.

I realized after my last post that I never followed up on my guitar cabinet. It is amazing. It is punch-you-in-the-face red and sounds wonderful. The low wattage of the speaker (my choice) means that I have to do a little extra fiddling to get the amp to overdrive like I want it to, but that is a very small problem. After two lackluster band practices, I am very much thrilled to have it in my life. Sadly, it is living over at the Kern Center right now, since I don't want to haul it back and forth. It's almost 50lbs, leave me alone.

Of course, now that I'm talking about it, I want to play, even if it is just through headphones. I could really use a set of over-ear headphones that aren't my headset.

I love playing this guitar. The neck feels much faster, and I'm pretty sure I can play it better than my acoustic. I'm assuming that is due to the narrower width and smaller depth of the Toronado.

And with that, it is late and I should sleep.

Symptoms

2009-10-17T00:48:00.005-05:00

I'm not entirely sure it I am motivated enough to write at the moment, but if I have learned one thing in my plethora of writing classes this quarter it is that I should write, even if it I don't think it is going to turn out well.

Tonight was pretty wonderful, which is why I'm not sure where this mellowness came from. I did some homework and then headed over to AK's to eat pizza, followed by a cold half-block walk to Metrobrook. Square dancing was more fun that I could have imagined - dancing in small (and sometimes large) groups with bunches of strangers? Not normally my scene, but it was enjoyable. I feel somewhat cultured. Now, do I go and attempt to impress my square-dancing grandparents with this tale? Time will tell.

Then AK and I played BGDA for a while, and then I came home and put the straplocks on my guitar. There's something unnerving about putting screws in my guitar, even if they are going in pre-drilled holes. I think the combination of screwdriver and guitar is what does it. I still need to steal loctite from Brandon to keep the nuts from jiggling loose, but for now it is pretty exciting.

Tomorrow will be apple picking at The Elegant Farmer. Hopefully it will at least not be rainy, but apples are well worth getting a little damp for. I'd be more excited, but I kind-of ran out of energy a little while ago. I should sleep, but I felt like writing, so there you go.

I need to work on writing songs, but I just haven't had much to emote about lately. Therein lies the problem: I could write if I were very happy or very sad or very something, but at present, all my emotions are nice and level, so I have no strong feelings one way or the other. Ambivalent music is not entertaining in the genres for which I write. Does anybody want to start dating me to get me super happy, then dump me unexpectedly to make me super sad? My band(s) would appreciate it.

Additionally, I am 21 and still afraid of getting shots.

There's nothing like preparing a Christmas list to make you feel greedy and ashamed for it. Nothing against Christmas, and don't get me wrong - if I'm getting a gift, I'd rather it be something I want/can use - but the whole gift-giving thing is somewhat stressful. So, I have been trying to figure out what of the things I want are price appropriate and not complicated enough to place on a list. The internets have made this much easier, since I can provide an exact link to things. I used to comparison shop for my list recipients, but nowadays Amazon is competitive enough to just give a single link. I think the most compact form of my wish list would be a link to Nikon USA's list of current lenses. Were I smarter, I would have held off on getting my guitar things all gathered and put extra strings, straplocks, and a distortion pedal on the list. That would have been a better idea.

Of course, I've now written a paragraph about wanting things.

I used to know exactly what I wanted to do with my life - my perfect story of how everything would go. Lately it's been one of 4 or 5 different tracks. I'm also finding that I don't really care which one it follows. I guess I am more worried about the present, namely, finding a job. I know, I know - it is way too early for me to worry about a post-graduation job. Whatever.

I feel like I should have more to say about the square dancing adventure. There were people there? I danced with several strangers who either go to my church or are friends of people who go to my church. It was a surprisingly pleasant component of human connection that I've been missing. It's touch, but not in the creepy "I want to touch you" way, just in a basic human communication way. I've no idea if that came out correctly at all. I'll trust you to interpret my meaning correctly.

Who at Nikon decided that we needed an 85mm f/3.5 DX Macro lens? The DX and f/3.5 part seem to alienate the people who need a serious macro lens for professional use - they have the 60/2.8 and the 105/2.8. So is it a budget lens, designed for new shooters? It could be, at $550, but the 60/2.8 is slightly less, so it's still something that, well, doesn't seem all that useful. I guess Nikon knows their market better than I do. That said, it says "Nikon" on it, so I want one.

I always want to put my "punchlines" - the sentence in a paragraph that makes me giggle - on a new line. The problem with that is, in these (relatively) long multi-topic posts, starting a new paragraph implies to the reader that I am changing topics. So I tuck my "clever" lines in with the paragraph, usually at the end. I know, if you're skimming, you won't ever see them.

The new Relient K CD, Forget and Not Slow Down, is pretty wonderful. It isn't catchy, which some people will confuse for "not good", but I promise you there is a ton there if you are willing to move beyond the average attention span of a pop music listener (I'm guilty of this too, I wasn't so keen on the album the first time through). It seems like more of a headphone album, one that is better heard alone and concentrating rather than played loud. It's not a CD with which you will sing along with your friends. I wouldn't expect to hear it at parties. It just isn't that kind of music. RK has something truly wonderful on their hands, though - I keep coming back to the disc and finding new things to love, especially lyrically. There are some amazing words on this disc; and they make the disc well worth the cost of admission and the extra effort to hear them out.

It is getting late, though, and I have a fair bit of work to do before and after apple picking tomorrow, not the least of which includes picking a topic for an ethics paper. I never knew it was so hard to pick a topic that can be explained to a professor who appears to be the mental equivalent of a hyperactive six-year-old. Seriously, man, stop changing the topic of discussion every twenty seconds. And learn how the internet works. I got told that blocking website advertisements wasn't actually a moral issue since nobody got hurt. /facepalm

But I digress: the hour of the morning. I should sleep. Farewell.

Writing and Editing

2009-10-10T00:37:00.003-05:00

I should be in bed right now. I have a lot to get done this weekend, not the least of which is a series of 5 reflections on 5 chapters for my Communication Theory class.

There are people in the apartment, which it currently my excuse, but since I'm not interacting with them, it's not a very valid one. I am trying to get through a complete listen of Forget and Not Slow Down, because that hasn't happened yet. I've only had the disc for a day. I'm liking it so far, though it's not blowing me away. Then again, I'm only 7 tracks in. I'm actually enjoying this song quite a bit (Therapy), so that's good.

Today was the career fair. Call me pessimistic, but it was kind-of depressing. I realized that I am not a very impressive person, which it a problem, but I don't know what to do about it. I talked to some folks about some jobs, and I'll follow up and see what comes of it all. That's the best I can do.

On a more positive note, I spent several hours at the ACM LAN party playing Rock Band and TF2. That was considerably more enjoyable than anything else I did during school this week, even if I am pretty bad at shooting games. Very much fun indeed.

And now I am sitting. I'll get my guitar back tomorrow and probably blow a lot of time playing with the now-together combo of guitar/amp/cabinet which I have been gushing about all week. Nobody seems that interested in any of it. I guess I can't blame them.

Crap, I have to have a draft of my article done by Tuesday. I should pick a topic. I don't think 5-7 pages will be bad at all, I just have to decide what I'm going to write about.

Speaking of writing and of job seeking, I've been thinking a great deal about those two topics together as of late. I've been having a great deal of success with my writing classes this quarter, and it honestly feels good to write. It's not even about liking the topics or writing voluntarily, I've actually been really enjoying my writing assignments. This includes my recent American Government paper which I did not feel I spent enough time on that came back with the comment "A pleasure to read" affixed to the last page. That, and the praise of my classmates and professor when we read and edit drafts in my writing and editing class has me thinking a lot about my future: I've been considering something journalistic for the last few years in the back of my mind, and maybe that's where I'll end up. A marketing department? Engineering and technical sales? I can see myself enjoying it. Then there's the burning hypothetical question: if (when) I go to grad school, do I get a masters in engineering or something more writing-related? The possibilities are endless as far as I see it.

I'm worried about getting a job. I know I shouldn't worry, but I do anyhow. I defy you, common sense.

Reset Button

2009-10-06T15:19:00.003-05:00

I feel like I should blog more.

This weekend was pretty incredible. I ditched Church on Sunday and was up before dawn to head north to Horicon Marsh for what turned into almost a full day of shooting with Brarmen. It was cold and windy and cloudy, but damn was it beautiful. We trudged through the marshes (on paths, of course) under the beautifully diffused sky shooting pictures as we saw fit. Just being out in the middle of nowhere for a while was refreshing. There was no work to be done, no responsibilities, just nature and my camera. I should go on shoots like that more often. It has put a nice layer of elation on this whole week (so far). It was like being reset, I feel alive again.

But I suppose that wasn't the only thing that happened. Saturday found us (yes, Brarmen and I) at Wade's Guitar Shop, where I dropped off my beloved Toronado to be set up by the expert tech there, Carmen traded in her Les Paul for an acoustic, which is all mahogany and feels pretty amazing, and Brandon bought a forest of cables. To be fair, I picked up a cheap distortion pedal (what, it was in the clearance box!), another cable, and picks (1.14mm Tortex!) in addition to leaving my guitar behind. I got the call this morning that it's ready for me to pick up, but I'll have to see if I can get a ride to the shop before Saturday. Hopefully the answer is yes, since my cabinet should be arriving some time this week. I'm excited to have my music equipment all present and accounted for mostly so I can play, but also partly because then I can stop putting money into it.

I have to come up with an idea for an article for my writing and editing class, and I'm not sure what topic I can and want to write 5-7 pages on. My review seemed to go over well with both the class and the professor, though I haven't gotten the graded revision back yet. That class is proving to be one of the most enjoyable ones I have had here (embedded design classes notwithstanding).

Senior Design is going pretty well so far. We've hit some hiccups with hardware choices, but I think we've got most of that ironed out now. PCB design is a new, if not enjoyable experience. I feel like a bit of a slacker, since Brandon has been doing a larger share of the work so far, but then I remember that I am taking 19 credit hours. I'll help more when I have the free time. I am particularly enjoying the construction of PCB elements for the various connectors we're using; I've followed specs to build board connections for a DVI-I port, a DB-9 connector, and a 3.5mm TRS jack. It doesn't sound exciting, but I really rather enjoy it. I cannot, for the life of me, find a right-angle screw-on board-mount RG-6 jack. Seriously. At least I think it's RG-6. Cable TV coax is what I'm getting at.

There's been a bunch of new music coming out lately, including today's release of the new Relient K album, Forget and Not Slow Down, which will hopefully be coming to my home today. Brand New's phenonenal Daisy came out two weeks ago, and I may post the review of it I did for the aforementioned class. Paramore's Brand New Eyes broke last week, and it, too, is a pretty wonderful album. I'm liking it more than RIOT!, but then again, I loved that disc when it was new as well. There is so much musical excitement afoot.

This Friday is the career fair, and I am both excited and afraid for it, because I kind-of need to win hard at it so I have a job when I graduate. Yes, it is a while in the future, but the sooner I get an offer, the sooner I will be less stressed about graduation.

But for now, I have to run across the street for class. Peace out.

Gear

2009-09-29T19:22:00.003-05:00

I'm becoming a legitimate music hobbyist all of a sudden.

It's been sort of a joke that, when I bought by guitar this summer, I had no equipment. It took me about a month to pick up a case and a cable, and another month after that, just last week, to get an amp and a strap. So, two months with a beautiful guitar and nothing to play it through. I'll finally be able to stop playing through headphones some time in the next week or so when my speaker cabinet and cable for that come after I (finally) ordered them tonight.

So what am I playing? I have a Fender Toronado GT in bright red with the white racing stripes paired with a red and white Racer X vinyl strap from Couch Guitar Straps. This strap is seriously wonderful: it feels great and plenty sturdy, and it looks fantastic. The ends are better than I've ever seen on any strap anywhere and they have a very tight grip on the guitar. The amp is a second hand piece, picked up from my friend Brandon since he updated to a nicer, more bass-specific amp last year. It is a Crate Power Block, a sweet little amp that sounds great. It pumps out 150W max, which is a great deal more than I'll ever need for the cabinet I picked out, an Avatar G112W with a 25W Celestion Greenback speaker tucked inside. I can't say much about the cab yet, since I just placed my order, but reviews and chatting with people have lead me to believe that Avatar builds a very nice product. Getting to choose my own colours and speaker was icing on the cake: The cabinet will be an open-back 1x12 covered in red Tolex with a black grille.

Needless to say, I am excited.

Followup: GEHC

2009-09-24T20:30:00.002-05:00

So. I got a call today, and there's no EEDP spot for me at GE. I'm a little bummed, but not much. The EEDP manager said that the STP manager, who was one of the people who interviewed me for the position, wants to talk to me about jumping into STP, a similar program that is more software-focused. I figure it can't hurt to interview, right? I'm just not sure I want to abandon hardware to delve deep into software. We'll see.

Hide-and-Seek

2009-09-19T23:12:00.003-05:00

It was like a plague, like a computer virus that had somehow spread to the physical world. The evidence was everywhere, every time he looked in a place he had not been in some time, there was more evidence, more material linking him to things he liked to put behind him. The first time he found out that the notes and letters had been preserved in his obsessive backup scheme, he felt a mix of pride (in the thoroughness of the backup) and regret, because upon discovering the documents, he hadn't the self-control to keep from spending an hour looking over every word and staring at every photo. It took all the willpower he had to shift-delete them away. That was the only other copy beyond the originals.

Weeks later, it happened again: another backup, another set of the same photos and letters, perfectly preserved and safe - as intended by the data redundancy, of course - in an obscure folder. He read through one letter, looked at one photo he was sure he should not have looked at, let alone still (or ever) possessed, then shift-deleted the lot again. That was the last copy.

Later still, while cleaning out a closet during a day of spontaneous cleaning, he came across more evidence. Paper was harder to destroy than files, it required more commitment than pressing keys, it seemed more final. He left the things as they were.

Folders in backups of multiple computers revealed how thoroughly he has entrenched the digital evidence into his mind. It was everywhere, though now rather than a sad experience, it was a burden, a scheme created by the second party to get back in his head. It was simple, now, to delete without so much as opening the folders. Their names were succinct enough, and he now knew what was in every copy. The same letters and photos that served no purpose whatsoever. The same ones that never meant anything to begin with.

It became a joke, a puzzle. A self-made challenge to see how cleverly he had hidden things he wanted, but did not want himself to know he had. Each time he discovered another backup while searching for something else, he would chalk it up to good sense - after all, if this one folder was safe, certainly all his data was safe.

And finally, one night, after finding a particularly well-hidden set of year-old backups and deleting them without a third thought (for he saw fit to write about it), he went back to the paper letters and knew: they could be safely destroyed now. It was over. With no melodrama beyond this telling, no fire, no tearing, no anger or rage, the last known physical evidence was gone.

As it should be, he thought. As it should be.

Internal Monologue: Anger Management

2009-09-15T22:29:00.003-05:00

I get so angry and resentful sometimes. For better or for worse, a lot of it stays in my head, churning up over and over until I either forget about it or it comes exploding out in a flash of poor thinking and bad ideas.

I find that I rarely take the passive-aggressive route and leave angry notes or do things for the sole purpose of making my target angry, which I feel is a good thing. I may be wrong, especially since I generally choose to ignore things. I never want to rub people the wrong way, I worry too much about what the people around me think. After all, I have to be around them! I don't want them upset with me if I can get away with it. At least, no more upset with me than they already are. I often break things or make them worse when I try to help. It's a gift and a curse, really.

I have become painfully interested in how other people perceive me, often vastly overthinking situations and making unbased assumptions on how I feel about myself. Is that projection? I don't know. I'm not entirely sure what my purpose behind writing this is. Anyhow, I ahve become very aware of how I look and sound and act in situations, and it often causes me undue stress, and therefore shyness. Not cripplingly, but shyness nonetheless. I started to gain weight around the middle of last school year. Was it the nightly Roscoes? Was it the hours spent reading/doing homework/watching TV? Yes, probably. It was a new experience for me, though, as I haven't ever really had to, well, care about my weight. But there it was, my new tummy, not letting me feel comfortable in my size small tshirts. I hemmed and hawed, but vanity won out, and I started working out. Curiously, when I was trying to work out for heath purposes at the start of last school year (a year ago, now), it lasted exactly once. Now that I'm working out for vanity, to preserve some image I have of myself and want to show to other, I have been going for months, only missing a night when I have to. I guess the worry isn't totally useless.

I'm not sure where I'm going, or if I am working toward some main point. I'm not really aware right now, I'm just typing.; tryign to empty my mind out onto this page before I go sleep. And not in an emo way, mind you, just in a my-head-is-full-and-I-need-to-relieve-some-pressure way. I'm really quite happy except for being permanently sleepy.

My stifling of troubles and/or anger and resentment lead to an outburst of which I am not proud, which, I suppose, lead to my thinking on this subject more lately. I freaked out, fortunately not on someone on whom I rely for support, but it was still regrettable and gave me a nice gaping home in which to peer at my previously-unknown method of hiding things. I ever used to do this, but I suppose with my removal from my high school support network and my significant-other support channel, I was bottling things up until I could talk with someone about things, and even then I was never able to get everything out. It can be hard to type things, you know? So inasmuch as my friends were able to help me, I was still holding on to some things, unknowingly, until they found a catalyst: a bit of Social Network Stalking (checking up on). I'm grateful that I learned about said feelings, but at the same time, I would have preferred not to have made an ass of myself. I ask for small things.

I'm not sure how to force things to the surface, or if I even want to. I like being unaware of things, at least for a while. I don't like getting stuck on them in my mind, though. They just build in intensity and frustration, and that doesn't end well for anyone involved.

Things of Note

2009-09-14T19:34:00.005-05:00

Numbered list time:

I hope to someday pen a love story to rival those that have touched me the most. Most notably, Ned/Chuck (Pushing Daisies) and especially Jim/Pam (The Office).
I found the band 65daysofstatic via TheSixtyOne and they are incredible for reading/studying when I can't have words in my music. They are an instrumental industrial rock band, and I love it.
I think I could write and track my own instrumental stuff. It's an idea for sure.
Why are there so few Bluetooth mice on the market? The convenience of not having an extra dongle to lose or eat up a USB port is delightful. I'll want to replace my mouse someday (I imagine it will die of love/use at some point) and I'd like a better selection.
I'm excited/afraid to hear back from GE. I've got my two futures in my mind, with a small list of places at which I want to apply if I don't get the GE thing. GEHC is still my top choice, though. I should know in a week or so.
I want to read a book or three about the business and technology behind cellular networks.
Additionally, I am pretty sure I'd like to end up working in/with/around the cellular industry. Top two choices? Designing phones, designing antennas and tower equipment.

And now there are seven more things for me to think about.

The Office

2009-09-13T22:08:00.003-05:00

I have spent almost this entire weekend watching The Office.

Nick and I watch TV shows when we eat. Since moving into the apartment, we have worked our way through Chuck, Dollhouse, and Pushing Daisies. Then, Friday afternoon, Nick got tired of trying to convince me to watch The Office and put the first episode of the first season on. I watched 20+ episodes that afternoon/evening/night/early the next morning. I was captivated. I became instantly emotionally involved with the characters. Jim and Pam, though not together at the time, made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Watching Michael blunder his way through each episode went from amusing to extremely uncomfortable (most notable, the season 2 Christmas episode). I was taken. I was addicted.

So Saturday, after getting up early to attend the senior workshop and putting in an hour at work, I returned to the couch and watched The Office. From 2pm until midnight. I slept, and had a vague dream I don't remember well, though I am relatively certain that it involved some aspect of the show. I got up this morning and went to church, did some homework, then watched The Office some more. I have chewed through well over 50 episodes in under 3 days. I think I need a break, at least for the rest of today.

There is just so much there. Jim and Pam have sort-of restored my faith in love, however scripted their relationship is. That sounds considerably insane. I apologize, but I do not take it back. The dynamic between them through the first and part of the second season is incredible. Currently, midway though season 4, their happiness seems hard-earned and perfect. Yes, I teared up twice, and once was during the season 2 finale. The other was when there was a crying Pam in the lobby and Dwight was comforting her. I don't remember exactly which episode it was, they've all started to get stuck together into one gigantic string of storyline (Edit: S03E11 - Back From Vacation).

It's just so well written. The thing that really got me was how the camera acts like a character at times, at one point in season 2 sneaking up to the reception desk to get Pam's attention, then pointing back at Dwight eating a Baby Ruth bar, then pointing back at Pam. It was fantastic. There have been other moments where the camera has intervened, but the first instance is still the strongest in my memory. Brilliant.

But this is getting weird now. I should sleep.

I did some homework in there. At least I got caught on this early in the quarter, right? So I can catch up before it can mess with my grades. Yes.

Fragments: A Song in Want of More Words.

2009-09-07T23:45:00.006-05:00

But baby, who's got time for love when all your mistakes now are showing
and the consequences of your past decisions come a' calling
at the bottom of the bottle, does it make you feel much better
for the lying and the leaving, girl, I swear I'll never call you again

keep your eyes glazed over, there's a world out there might hurt you but it can't touch you if you don't feel it
and don't-for-get that living's what you live for, so down the rest of the bottle
and to hell with all the details,doesn't matter who you're with, only that you can't feel it

keep finding pictures of you, they're hidden everywhere
it's like a weed, it keeps reproducing
I've got an allergy to all the dust you breathed
I've got to clear it out, purify it
I've cleaned and cleaned for weeks
but you planted your roots so deep, I can't kill them
I was never one for anger and despair
but girl, you seem to love them

My friends (have) forgotten your name, almost forgot you were there
Of all the blissful thoughts
I know you're scared of disappearing, it's a fear I used to notice
and you can bet I'd use it

Verse: CEAG
Chorus: FCAG

I don't know if this is what I actually want, but it is closing in. Let me think about music, then I'll get back to more words.

Black/White

2009-08-31T23:03:00.003-05:00

I always hear about how artists have "periods" in their lives defined by a shift in their artistic style. Is it a phenomenon reserved for artists, or can us normal people have sectioned lives characterized by paradigm shifts, too? Additionally, can we attribute that artist's change in style (our paradigm shift) with some change in our lives and behaviours?

I've been feeling black-and-white lately. Mellow, sleepy, and essentially different shades of the same colour. Artistically, I have not been writing. I have been trying to shoot more, but the results have been lacklustre save for a few shots that I've really liked only after I sucked out their colour. But I'm not sad about it, just different intensities of neutral. I moved from one job back to my previous one, but it still feels like the same desk and the same nothing-to-do moments bookended by busy, too-much-to-do ones. I am living in this black-and-white world that is pretty tolerant of me because I blend in. I'm not like the creepy dude in the photo with artificially coloured eyes that pop out at you and make you feel like "this photo must be art because it is mostly black and white."

I felt pretty silly with my new camera in hand, not being able to take a single decent shot all weekend while I was home. I shot some, yes, but except for one late-evening walk with Ashley, the shots were poorly-aimed demonstrations of the (actually very neat) wireless flash system that makes the SB-600 pop without it being actually attached to the camera. I took a video because I felt it was a feature that I needed to use if I was going to buy a camera with said feature. I learned that I can set the shutter speed and aperture and ISO just like a still shot, so maybe I will find some use for it. I managed to get a 15-second video of a bee landing on a dandelion and then flying away. Kind-of neat, but I shot it with the 35/1.8, so everything was too small. Having direct access to just about everything is nice, but I can't say I've needed it yet. Maybe the next time I shoot. The body feels better in my hand, though, and that alone is perhaps reason enough to love the D90. It feels solid, pleasantly curved in the grip, and is considerably heavier than the D40 it replaced. More people need to put APS-C size sensors into compact cameras, maybe then I will think about replacing my current one.

Photography is a wonderful thing, but it is by no means the only thing. Music has been suffering lately. This is curious especially since I just bought a new guitar, but then again, I have not been in a musical phase. Perhaps my black and white period will be more of a silent film than a musical. I am very ready to go back to school, what with its activities and learning. I miss learning, so much so that I fear for my full-time employment satisfaction due to my lack of being taught with the regularity that constant schooling provides. A masters degree will be a must. I can see my self with a prefix; the good doctor indeed.

People seem so angry all the time, and I don't understand why. With all the terrible in the world, nothing is ever really so bad that we need to contribute to the terrible, is it? Anger is annoying; I avoid it. It is not so much fleeing as feigned ignorance - I tend to ignore people who are fuming and being passive-aggressive. Honestly? It's not the best method, but I would rather have a poor method than be in a state of constant anger at the world.

I like taking pictures. When I am in the right mindset, there is no greater feeling. I suppose that is how lots of things work: when we want them, they make us feel awesome.

I missed having coffee with my team at GE this morning. Not so much the caffeine as the people. Hopefully I'll be back soon enough.

Reflections

2009-08-27T21:59:00.003-05:00

This post needs some soundtrack. Lets go with the original(?) version of the Plain White T's Hey There Delilah. I don't actually know what CD it's from, I got it on a mix CD.

A little over a year ago, in July of 2008, I picked up my first DSLR, a Nikon D40. I had been interested in Photography in Junior High at LP, opting to take the photo PDT with Ms. Borck rather than the music one with Dr.Z (who, at the time, did not have his title). I shot with my parents manual-everything Canon AE-1. I learned a lot, but I thought it had all been forgotten until the end of high school when I was given my Canon A540, a point-and-shoot, sure, but I made sure to ask for one with manual controls. I didn't (and don't) use them often, but just having the option helped light up that little spark. I began to steal my parent's camera (a Pentax k110D) on vacations and, despite myself, shoot in easy mode, essentially making it a large-sensored, gigantic point-and-shoot. My Sophmore year of college found me dating a girl who was very interested in photography, and while she has come and gone, the desire to shoot rekindled by the close proximity of a SLR to my person did not. I bought the D40 the summer between my Sophmore and Junior years of college with an 18-55 and a 55-200, and I took it with me every time I went someplace interesting. The zoo? of course. Vacations, weekend trips, treks into the city? Naturally. It became second nature to use, the buttons sat naturally under my fingers, the rubber grip was like a hug for my hand. Light and nimble, the babyslr, as I came to call it, was always ready when I needed it.

After a a little over a year of service and over 7,300 shutter releases, I handed the D40 off to a new loving parent for it. It was emotional, to be sure - you don't press a button seven thousand times without forming an emotional bond - but it was time for somebody else to cherish the camera.

To help contain my grief, I ordered a Nikon D90 three days before the sale happened.

Ok, to be honest, I sold the D40 in order to buy the D90. But it's so much less romantic that way. There's nothing compelling about "I upgraded from my first slr!" It's not like graduating from training wheels to a shiny new 10-speed. Sure, I moved from one command dial to two, and from three autofocus points to eleven (with one cross-type sensor!), but it's just not the same. I had to introduce drama into it somehow.

That said, after an evening of futzing with the D90, I am in love. I should be showering or practicing for the picnic tomorrow, but instead I played with ISO settings and live view and wireless flash and setting up the display and menus and d-movie mode. It is beautiful and it has SO MANY buttons.

Of course, I will be home this weekend, so that means no trips into the city with Brarmen and their D60 and new D40 (yes, that D40). The '90 will have to wait for that trip, although I may try to convince somebody to walk with me while I am home. The camera needs a self portrait.

In other, non-camera-related news, tomorrow is my last day at GE for the summer. It is both happy and sad, happy because that means it is time for school, and sad because I really enjoyed my summer. Ah well, hopefully they will hire me back and I can go chill with my old team again.

New Music: I Fight Dragons

2009-08-19T20:49:00.002-05:00

Know how when you find someone/thing that you love you feel the need to tell everyone you know how happy you are about it? It all happens so fast: One day you meet, the next, it seems, you are in love. You do silly things, like writing messages online back and forth, burning mix CDs for one another, and delaying social plans to spend time together.

This is how I feel about the Chicago band I Fight Dragons which I discovered about two days ago on the aforementioned (and incredible!) site TheSixtyOne. Think alternative rock + classic video games. Yes, it is just as awesome as you are imagining it. Like Motion City Soundtrack with an NES instead of a keyboard. Like Something Corporate with a girl playing a Power Glove instead of Andrew McMahon.

Guys. This bad is seriously amazing. Don't believe me? Sign up for their mailing list and they'll give you a copy of their EP. Heck, if you don't want to take the time to join the list, you can grab the EP from my webspace. (It's ok; from the zip file: Finally, feel free to pass this EP around in digital form to friends, enemies, or frenemies. We’re much more interested in having cool people hear our music than in copyright lawsuits.)

The even-more-exciting part of this whole thing is that they are playing right here in Milwaukee, not three blocks from MSOE, on Friday (the 21st). I will be going, and anyone who wants to come is more than welcome to join me, provided that you are over 21 and have $5.

Kids. It will be awesome, I promise. How awesome? Awesome enough that I bought the EP on Amazon and made a mix CD with it, along with The Guild's hit single.

Check them out.

I have other things to say, I think, but I am so excited about this that I don't know if I can.

Worthy

2009-08-17T22:16:00.002-05:00

I have been putting off blogging because I have either been complaining or fruitlessly trying to continue my novel. Neither are very useful.

I find it absolutely exciting/frightening that in three or four weeks I will know if I have a job once I graduate. I mean, it's not the only opportunity, but it is the one that I really would like to get. GE you should hire me for an EEDP spot because I think it would be awesome. And I like to learn. And stuff. I'm not helping my case.

Beyond work, I have been doing mostly nothing, scattered with some "things" and "stuff" (incidentally, I have become infamous for using the phrase "things and stuff" when explaining what a given line of code does at work. My mentor finds it amusing.)

I've been spending a great deal of time on TheSixtyOne, a pretty incredible (although not necessarily pretty?) site that is a weird combination of Digg and an MMORPG for independent music. If it does not sound awesome, you are reading it wrong. It has music for every genre and taste and is one of the best things on the internets. If you check it out because of me and sign up, give me some love and put me down as having sent you (poco153, naturally). It gets me rep. Rep is invaluable. I need to level up.

I should probably sleep. I have long days at work coming up and so forth.

That, and I really don't have anything of worth to share with you.

Thursday Turmoil

2009-08-06T22:17:00.002-05:00

We have this huge collective crush
on caffeine and
cocaine and
blaming things that are not to blame
To make ourselves feel
better and to make ourselves feel
prettier and to make ourselves feel
less guilty for our own shortcomings.
We have this broken marriage to the
media to the
networks to the
failing political system and all of its hecklers
To make ourselves feel
more involved and to make ourselves feel
important and to make ourselves feel
nothing.

Regression

2009-08-02T09:29:00.003-05:00

I am prone to regressing, returning to places in my mind where I was more comfortable, happier, and better taken care of. It's a glitch, since there is a reason for the ceasing of every period to which I regress, and expecting the outcome of the same previously-lived situations to be any different this second dreamland time is a sign or insanity.

It is strange, the times I end up regressing to, and perhaps even more odd the times that I do not return to.

My attention span has also been waning as of late.