Monday, February 20, 2006
Just...."more"
I had a pretty great weekend. Late Saturday night I decided to head down to the neighborhood Hollywood Video to peruse the used (cheap) section to see what had been rotated out of the primary selection. The great thing about living in Scottsdale is that nobody buys things used. There is just something about "used" that is completely unappealing to the populous here. Their loss is totally my gain. I picked up the following:
Robot Stories
Layer Cake
The Life Aquatic
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Me and You and Everyone We Know, completely true to Heidi's word, was stunning. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you *need* to see this. This isn't a regular "need," like I need to buy groceries; this is a goddamn moral imperative. I am not the sort of individual that particularly enjoys love stories. I love sci-fi. I enjoy fantasy on occasion. This, however, was wonderful.
I don't think I've ever seen a love story where I actually "loved" the characters. Everyone is more than just alive; they have vivacity. Their pain is your pain. Their hope is your hope. I normally don't root for characters, but this time I wanted to shout for them.
At the risk of talking this movie to death I'm going to leave it at the point where I told you to go see it. I'm still going to hit one last point.
There's an exchange of dialog in the movie that essentially covers girls potentially losing their virginity to a man they know remarkably little about. The main point was "You know, I always thought I'd lose my virginity to, you know, my boyfriend or someone I loved." Which was responded to with "In a way this is a better, 'cause what if you screw up? It won't matter this way."
It's like when you hear something that's constructed with completely backward and flawed logic, but it still makes sense. I think I still have this mindset in a very real way. Who cares what strangers think? After all, I may never see them again. I'm the sort of person that doesn't mind making a fool of himself in crowds, because everyone is a stranger. Add some emotions and sentiments into the mix and things become far less clear. It just becomes an entirely different ballgame when you care.
What if I screw up? What if I'm reading into this wrong? What if, what if, what if? What if I'm a complete idiot? Lord knows I feel like it sometimes. Luckily I'm resilient and I can pick myself back up, dust myself off and say "tomorrow's another day," but it still stings to screw up.
Inadequacy is the name of this game. Like most things it has nothing to do with reality, but just the perception of reality. It just feels like everything right now is kind of haunting me. Supposedly CMU acceptance/rejection letters started going out Friday. Did I make it? I still don't know. Nevermind that all of my friends, and professors, and coworkers have essentially assured me of my admission. I still feel like I might not make it. I'm starting to think it's a sense of inadequacy buried in the back of my mind. I'm confident, but reserved. I want to be less reserved and more forward. More forward and more absolute with my moves.
Things I need to work on: my communication skills. They're great on paper, but I need to make them better in person. My patience... CMU needs to hurry the fuck up with their letters. I'm starting to go bat-shit-loco playing the waiting game.
If your going to send some love, now is the time to do it.
Robot Stories
Layer Cake
The Life Aquatic
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Me and You and Everyone We Know, completely true to Heidi's word, was stunning. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you *need* to see this. This isn't a regular "need," like I need to buy groceries; this is a goddamn moral imperative. I am not the sort of individual that particularly enjoys love stories. I love sci-fi. I enjoy fantasy on occasion. This, however, was wonderful.
I don't think I've ever seen a love story where I actually "loved" the characters. Everyone is more than just alive; they have vivacity. Their pain is your pain. Their hope is your hope. I normally don't root for characters, but this time I wanted to shout for them.
At the risk of talking this movie to death I'm going to leave it at the point where I told you to go see it. I'm still going to hit one last point.
There's an exchange of dialog in the movie that essentially covers girls potentially losing their virginity to a man they know remarkably little about. The main point was "You know, I always thought I'd lose my virginity to, you know, my boyfriend or someone I loved." Which was responded to with "In a way this is a better, 'cause what if you screw up? It won't matter this way."
It's like when you hear something that's constructed with completely backward and flawed logic, but it still makes sense. I think I still have this mindset in a very real way. Who cares what strangers think? After all, I may never see them again. I'm the sort of person that doesn't mind making a fool of himself in crowds, because everyone is a stranger. Add some emotions and sentiments into the mix and things become far less clear. It just becomes an entirely different ballgame when you care.
What if I screw up? What if I'm reading into this wrong? What if, what if, what if? What if I'm a complete idiot? Lord knows I feel like it sometimes. Luckily I'm resilient and I can pick myself back up, dust myself off and say "tomorrow's another day," but it still stings to screw up.
Inadequacy is the name of this game. Like most things it has nothing to do with reality, but just the perception of reality. It just feels like everything right now is kind of haunting me. Supposedly CMU acceptance/rejection letters started going out Friday. Did I make it? I still don't know. Nevermind that all of my friends, and professors, and coworkers have essentially assured me of my admission. I still feel like I might not make it. I'm starting to think it's a sense of inadequacy buried in the back of my mind. I'm confident, but reserved. I want to be less reserved and more forward. More forward and more absolute with my moves.
Things I need to work on: my communication skills. They're great on paper, but I need to make them better in person. My patience... CMU needs to hurry the fuck up with their letters. I'm starting to go bat-shit-loco playing the waiting game.
If your going to send some love, now is the time to do it.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Exhaustion
I'm tired. Really, really fucking tired.
Last night was the night one of my longer-term projects at work had to go live. I got in to work early (9am-ish). I left at around 6:30pm for a break and so I could workout. I returned at 10pm to do the deployment.
I finished the deployment at 07:00 MST.
Fuck, I'm done.
This weekend NEEDS to be phenomenal.
On the positive side work is now thoroughly convinced that I know what's up.
Hooray for rocking at your job.
Sleep....
Last night was the night one of my longer-term projects at work had to go live. I got in to work early (9am-ish). I left at around 6:30pm for a break and so I could workout. I returned at 10pm to do the deployment.
I finished the deployment at 07:00 MST.
Fuck, I'm done.
This weekend NEEDS to be phenomenal.
On the positive side work is now thoroughly convinced that I know what's up.
Hooray for rocking at your job.
Sleep....
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Monkeys and voltmeters
I wish I had a semantic thesaurus that could act upon an entire sentence rather than just a single word. If such a magical device was to be invented I would look up the alternatives to such colorful expressions as "Two monkeys fucking a football." My page-flipping efforts would be rewarded with the physics lab experience I had earlier this evening.
Have I mentioned that I hate my physics class? This is not standard hate. Oh, no. This is visceral. This is the kind of hate that given the right circumstances, and bacteria, would lead to an all out peptic ulcer. While I know that it might seem like gross hyperbole to say that my physics class is causing me immense physical duress; let me assure you, the ammonia lining of my stomach does recede every time I have to set out for class. I can only hope that the adjacent classroom full of biology students will be able to piece together my garbled statements and seek a life-saving member of the medical community when I finally go ape shit, bleed out of the ears, and club one of these fuckers to death with an oscilloscope.
Allow me to set the scene. I have had a long day at work. Really long day. Projects-spontaneously-developing-right-in-front-of-my-eyes-with-critical-deadlines long. I was prepared to set out for MCC along my usual path, only to discover the FBR Open (some golf event. Assuming there's someone out there that does, in fact, call "golf" an event) had let out and had clogged the freeway and surface. I head home to finish my lab write up. I didn't do it last week, because, honestly, there's no goddamn reason that I should piss away the hour it's going to take to write up a lab on basic electrical circuits. Really basic. Three resistors in series basic.
I digress....
After I finish the write up, and conveniently miss the lecture part of the class, I head down to campus. Upon arriving I was able to join my lab group for the actual "experiment" part of the evening. Watching them set up an oscilloscope was quite a thing to behold. I'm not rightly sure what even happened to be honest. I just remember laughing to myself (silently) when I see three different people's hands reaching for three distinct knobs and all turning at the same time. This is followed with three voices telling me "it's not working."
At what point do you think it might be a good idea to only vary one thing at a time? When do you think they would actually start reading the labels on the knobs? These are relevant questions- and for some reason were not being asked. After watching the monkeys fuck the football for about thirty minutes we just decided to give up and use someone else's rig.
It's going to be a long semester.
Have I mentioned that I hate my physics class? This is not standard hate. Oh, no. This is visceral. This is the kind of hate that given the right circumstances, and bacteria, would lead to an all out peptic ulcer. While I know that it might seem like gross hyperbole to say that my physics class is causing me immense physical duress; let me assure you, the ammonia lining of my stomach does recede every time I have to set out for class. I can only hope that the adjacent classroom full of biology students will be able to piece together my garbled statements and seek a life-saving member of the medical community when I finally go ape shit, bleed out of the ears, and club one of these fuckers to death with an oscilloscope.
Allow me to set the scene. I have had a long day at work. Really long day. Projects-spontaneously-developing-right-in-front-of-my-eyes-with-critical-deadlines long. I was prepared to set out for MCC along my usual path, only to discover the FBR Open (some golf event. Assuming there's someone out there that does, in fact, call "golf" an event) had let out and had clogged the freeway and surface. I head home to finish my lab write up. I didn't do it last week, because, honestly, there's no goddamn reason that I should piss away the hour it's going to take to write up a lab on basic electrical circuits. Really basic. Three resistors in series basic.
I digress....
After I finish the write up, and conveniently miss the lecture part of the class, I head down to campus. Upon arriving I was able to join my lab group for the actual "experiment" part of the evening. Watching them set up an oscilloscope was quite a thing to behold. I'm not rightly sure what even happened to be honest. I just remember laughing to myself (silently) when I see three different people's hands reaching for three distinct knobs and all turning at the same time. This is followed with three voices telling me "it's not working."
At what point do you think it might be a good idea to only vary one thing at a time? When do you think they would actually start reading the labels on the knobs? These are relevant questions- and for some reason were not being asked. After watching the monkeys fuck the football for about thirty minutes we just decided to give up and use someone else's rig.
It's going to be a long semester.
