Category: Stress

Days 3 and 4: Texas

April 5, 2008 /

Day 3 also included Louisiana and Mississippi, but even before I left Alabama, Taylor and her friend Cheryl were mocking my car for its filthy appearance. When I took a closer look, I discovered something intriguing: that wasn’t dirt on it at all! It was pollen! My poor little Fit was encased entirely in a light, even coating of tree jizz.

Like heaven sprinkles from unicorn flowers. See, a flower is a kind of penis.

Man, you know what’s going to be great? Not living in the South.

But after that: Texas! Things do not seem to be bigger in Texas, but Texas is definitely bigger than anywhere else. This photo should give you some sense of scale:

See, it’s like the star is Texas, and Hugner is Earth.

Kris and Erica were kind enough to put me up for the night, even under the stress of their still-in-progress move and its pipe-related disasters. While there I got to meet Oxford, who demonstrated that it wasn’t just Hugner, but all Jinxlets who make dogs want to chomp them. And snuggle.

Like heaven kisses from unidog peepee.

Like kissy kisses from kissface kiss.

That latter shot features not just Kris and Hugner, but the original Hieronymous B’Gosh himself. I’d label them but come on, they’re pretty easy to tell apart. (NO Kris is in the MIDDLE)

I spent the remainder of the day and most of the night trying to get out the other side of Texas. I made it just barely over the border before collapsing in Las Cruces, which is a little pilgrimage to me for Anacrusis-related reasons. Hugner was tired of the whole thing a mere five hours out.

You have to kind of work to make him look sad.

After that he went over to the fence and peed because there was not so much as a gas station for two hours either way on I-20. Bad Hugner! But how can you even try to yell at that face?

I use the word “spook” in this entry because I am currently obsessed with William Gibson’s Spook Country. I’ll write about that too, eventually.

September 12, 2007 /

The quarterly investing magazinelet I get from my IRA holder has, as its latest cover line, “The Best-Laid Plans.” Like Anse Bundren, I don’t think they know the rest.

Plans are worthless. I had half an evening free from work tonight and it confused me: I had kind of forgotten what else to do with myself. I haven’t billed a mere 40 hours since the (four-day) week in which I flew back from London; last week–of which I theoretically spent half vacationing–I billed 60. It’s all for the same hideous, endless project, the kind you hear spook stories about from people who have spent too long working with computers. It was supposed to finally launch tonight, and I–as the project lead–hit every target that was required by 6:00. At 6:02 the client decided that two more problems were worth delaying launch for. By 8:30 (with my Tuesday friends waiting in the living room) I’d fixed those too. Guess whether the launch happened!

I need a vacation; the last one I had was nice, but it amounted to what most people would call a “weekend.” I’m running bufferless in all my endeavors and I obviously haven’t had time to write anything here. I also haven’t had time to get a haircut, pick up my new glasses or practice for a fairly important test.

Boo hoo, I get paid well to work on my couch. Pretend there’s a good segue here about writing, buffers, responsibility and personal milestones.

I miss MC Masala and I’m sad to see its archives disappearing from the Inside Bay Area site. Obviously, Sumana’s still blogging, but her column was different: the early ones had a conspiratory enthusiasm, as if the author was sneaking you in to see how columns work and wasn’t supposed to be there herself; the later ones displayed an enjoyable assurance and a growing set of tools for telling stories.

I hope she posts her own digital archive soon. Or (he murmured hypocritically) perhaps a book-on-demand?

And now it is later

August 1, 2007 /

I read the arrival time on my ticket as the departure time. That is what I did. That is the stupidest and most expensive mistake I have ever made.

My housemates kindly refused to let me heave all my luggage to Heathrow myself, and so we set out together with a bag apiece at a little after 10 am. We took the express and I was at the check-in counter by 11:15, smirking at the former self who had worried about transportation time and long lines. There was no line! There was only a brusque man explaining that my flight was not at 1:00, it had been at 10:30.

I explained that I had still been on the first of several public transportation routes at 10:30.

The brusque man directed me to the ticketing counter.

I got on standby for the next flight for 200 bucks, and I did end up on it, and my seat was actually one of the best on the plane. I completely missed the last plane to Louisville from O’Hare, of course, but got on a different standby flight to Lexington and Saint Maria drove out to those hinterlands in the middle of the night to pick me up.

It should be noted that my seat on the Lexington flight was also impossibly good. Here’s what I have learned about American Airlines: reserve a seat and get fucked, or get on standby for infinite leg room and an unobstructed window view. I’m never flying on a reserved ticket again! Wait, no, I said “on a reserved ticket” when I meant “anywhere.”

My original mistake almost ended up much more costly than I anticipated. The somewhat hilarious coda is that, during my panicky evening in O’Hare, I had to make a number of pay phone calls to David Flora and Maria, trying to figure out whether I would have to stay overnight in Chicago in order to get a morning flight to Louisville. I had forgotten that trying to call a nonlocal number (like, say, any cell phone ever) from a pay phone requires more quarters than I could have held in my cupped hands, so I had to charge all these to my credit card. This meant swiping the card directly on the phone, punching in the number on the keypad, and reading it aloud to the operator before I could connect.

Apparently someone wandered by and listened to me obligingly reading out the number, expiration date, CV2, et cetera, and proceeded to charge an amount greater than my entire credit limit to the card. Capital One actually noticed and denied it; their overenthusiastic fraud department often made things inconvenient in London, but my attitude toward them is much warmer now. I’ll miss my old card number, though, which I’ve had memorized for almost ten years. Farewell, 5291071505966037! May you serve Internet in poor decision-making as well as you did me.

There is a subtext to this story: I had three friends in London to help take my luggage all the way to Heathrow, buy me yogurt and let me send emergency emails from their phones. Those emails went to more friends, one of whom was willing to put me up in Chicago, another of whom was willing to drive to tiny airports late at night just so I could get home when I wanted. I traveled across seven time zones and I had people offering me help at every step. Who cares how much ticket changes or credit card scammers might cost me? I’m rich.

After I type this title I am going to shower for about a week

June 19, 2007 /

Fourteen hours ago I was on top of an Alp. Three hours ago I was getting lengthily hassled by Immigration about my months-long residence in the United Kingdom with no visible means of support. Eventually they decided they couldn’t really deport me and grumpily let me back in, but not without permanently detaining–get ready for it–my London library card. That is the pettiest thing I can imagine! I am going to write a book about petty people just so I can use that as an epitome!

But the hassling and bag search and back rooms and subsequent two-hour night bus ride don’t really take away from the experience of looking down on Innsbruck from four miles up (a good quarter of which we hiked) with a really good song on my headphones, learning the secret of Hafelekar summit. The secret is this: it’s fucking covered in poop and bugs. I guess the mountain goats and snow rabbits just love to use the lookout point as their special private time space, but man. They grow the flies big on Hafelekar summit.

Hbleagh.

April 25, 2007 /

Okay, the highest-volume blogs are up, all content and categories and whatnot included. They also, regrettably, all look like WordPress blogs. I’ll fix that after I spend tomorrow importing the lower-volume ones.

With the exception of the calendar, category and random-entry pages, all the old links to everything SHOULD be working, so please let me know if you find stuff that isn’t. I’m tired. It’s almost 5 am here.

But there will be an Anacrusis later today.

April 24, 2007 /

THINGS NEVER TO DO.

  1. Store images in a database without a really good reason.
  2. Store them in BLOB fields, rather than MEDIUMBLOBs or even LONGBLOBs.
  3. Preconvert them to ASCII, rather than native binary, and ignore that your database is Unicode, and will inflate the images to eight times their size.
    • (Consequence, just so we’re clear: those images you’re storing now get cut off after 1.5 kilobytes, for no readily apparent reason. For comparison, your typical Flickr photo preview is over 50k.)

  4. Fail to document any of this.
  5. QUIT AND LEAVE ME TO FIX YOUR HORRIBLE HACKWORK.

Blaaah. I’m tired of computers. My hair is 10% whiter after today.

March 7, 2007 /

American Airlines has thoughtfully applied so much pressure to my suitcase that not only did the Listerine, face wash, et cetera stored in the outer pocket burst from their bottles, they also burst the sealed plastic bag in which all said bottles were stowed. Thankfully, the third level of containment (the plastic pocket lining) held, and my clothing and board games did not get a thorough shampooing.

The reason I found this out today is because I have only just received the bag, which was lost when I arrived at the airport two and a half days ago. I put this down to good plane karma. I will elaborate.

Before I left, I spent hours researching the layout of my plane online, finding which seats had an extra inch of leg room, which had DC power outlets under the seats, etc. For the seven-hour flight over the pond, I selected 26B, an aisle seat with only one person who would have to crawl out past me and an Empower outlet right underneath.

Five minutes after settling into this seat and ramming my carry-on into the overhead compartment that was supposed to carry the lifejackets, the nice old lady next to me asked if I could do her a favor. Her friend had been supposed to sit next to her, you see, and they somehow got moved, and would I possibly consider switching with her?

Was her friend’s seat on an aisle? Oh yes, the lady assured me. Oh well, I thought.

It wasn’t. But it was only one seat in and there was an outlet under it. The gentleman next to me quirked an eyebrow. Had they asked me to switch seats, he inquired? Why yes, sir, they had. Would I believe that he, too, had a friend who was supposed to sit next to him? (Said friend, overjoyed, gave me a high five.)

This is how I ended up in the most central seat of the plane, sans outlet, unable to find anywhere to put my knees. Good thing I don’t have mild claustrophobia when I can’t move my legs! Oh wait!

I lived, anyway, and staggered off the plane with numb legs after only taking twenty minutes to find the carry-on the flight crew had spirited away to first class. My luggage had a better seat than me.

And yes, I consider my losing the small checked bag a mild repayment for the ordeal, because the large and much more important bag made it through just fine. I doubt I will care so much about my luggage on the way home, though. I have reserved a seat with one extra inch of leg room, and any nice ladies next to me can just fuck off and die.

February 15, 2007 /
  1. Do you own enough shit?

    YES

    NO

  2. Of course you don’t. Get some more! This is easy, because of Capitalism.
  3. GOTO 1
  4. Uh oh, it’s time to move! You’d better pack all that up, drive it around, and carry it up stairs. But your fleshy man-body is weak! What will you do?
    • Hire professionals
    • Ask your friends for help, but pay them what you would pay professionals
    • Ask your friends for help, on Valentine’s Day, in eight-degree weather, and repay them with Mexican food that you didn’t even buy, your girlfriend did
  5. Wow, you’re kind of a bastard! But at least all your shit is moved now.
  6. Wait! You still have more shit to move! How did that happen? You’d better stay up until 3 am. You can move the rest tomorrow! I mean today!
  7. GOTO 4

Thanks to Maria’s parents Mike and Susie, Scott, DC and Beth. We owe you guys a hell of a lot more than those enchiladas.

January 2, 2007 /

Guess who’s a big old jackass! The guy who washes his pants with his paycheck in the pocket. Why, that’s me!

That said, my current system of payment involves my issuing an electronic invoice, their cutting a check a week later, sending that check on a week-long 740-mile journey in a check-shaped envelope with a transparent window, and having me physically carry said check five blocks to the same bank every damn week. You’d think a company that is made of Internet could streamline this process somehow! I’m not denying my own culpability here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t call shenanigans on the system. The McDonald’s next door offers direct deposit, and my last employer required it, and my current employer should at least make it an option.

Update 1337 hrs: Spookily, right after I posted this, my boss called me to say that a) I’m now in the corporate bonus pool, despite being a consultant, and b) I just got a significant raise. All complaints withdrawn! Forever! Probably not forever.