Page 166 of 181

In which I worry and ramble

August 13, 2003 /

My boss just officially pitched me the do-you-want-to-keep-working-during-school question, and I’m torn. Working in a cube isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot more comfortable whatever retail or counter job I’d otherwise have this fall. Plus it looks a lot better to have months of programming experience already on your resume, even if it’s just as a part-timer.

On the other hand, I don’t like this job. The people are great and the environment is comfortable, but the work is boring, boring, boring and I’m only even halfway talented at it. At least if I (hypothetically) work at a bookstore I’ll be busy and competent, even if I’ll also be on my feet all day.

I just want to DO stuff. I want to be minting clean lean extreme code, not patching bugs in this enormous ugly proprietary system. It makes me tired and I look for distractions, and with broadband right here at my workstation, that’s not good for my productivity. That in turn makes me feel guilty about my work ethic, which makes me more stressed, which makes me tired, lather and rinse and so forth.

I know that I’ll probably start out bug-fixing wherever I go, so I should probably get used to it. The other thing, though, is that I have no idea what my workload is going to be like in grad school; my boss would clearly prefer that I keep my job uninterrupted, just dropping down to part-time, but by the time I get to midterms that could very well kill me. I don’t like taking twelve hours out of my day now, and I don’t want to find out what it’d be like to do that with homework. Also, I’m REALLY tired of getting up at 0630. I want an evening shift.

(It occurs to me that I’m posting this from work, and there exists the possibility of a random IT guy picking it up on a sniffer and sending it back to my boss with a cocked eyebrow. Just in case: Hello, IT guy! Your sister was great!)

Forty-five google minutes later, I’ve got a list of ten book or comic stores I could bus to. I think I’m going to make a bunch of phone calls tonight. At least thinking about this got me to dust off my bum and actually start thinking about what I’ll be doing in the fall. Sometimes questions find answers.

There’s one other thing to consider, too: if I keep up my secret practice project, it shouldn’t be too long until I’m confident about writing publishable short fiction. I know the money’s not great, but it beats all my other options until they spit candy. I also know that chances are slim, and that everybody and her grad school duck tries to write short fiction, but I do have one little in: not everybody or her grad school duck knows Nancy Zafris.

At least I’m in process now, which I think is the important thing. I could live on just my student loans, but I’d rather not, and it’s nice to be able to buy a comic book once in a while. I just need to figure out how and how much I can work. Hey, old people, anybody want to tell me what to do?

Argh.

August 13, 2003 /

Okay, so at some point my subdomains stopped working. That’s fucking great. No wonder people think the site is down–I’ve been giving out notfallingdown.xorph and shamzmam.xorph (for AZWP) forever, and now they give big old 404s. This is ridiculous. I really need to change webhosts, but I need several hours to get through such a transfer and it’s time I don’t have.

August 13, 2003 /

Spam:

  TV Too Small?     Turn yours into a 150 INCH Big Screen TV

At first I actually thought “TV” was yet another euphemism for “wang.” I know, 150 inches seems like quite a claim to make, but these guys don’t really have any hyperbolic limits.

August 12, 2003 /

I got about seven hours of sleep last night, and today I feel AMAZING. For the first time in weeks I didn’t fall asleep on the bus in to work, and I have no urge to hide under my desk and nap now. I even want to actually do work more than usual. I honestly can’t remember what it was like to regularly get more than four hours, even on weekends; was it always this good? Man, I must have been spoiled.

I joke about it a lot, but the fact is I’m pretty thoroughly and seriously sleep-deprived, and I’m starting to actually believe it affects my functionality. The problem is that, with travel time added in, I spend almost twelve hours a day preparing for or actually at work. I have one hour in there, during my lunch break, to do anything that doesn’t involve staring at a screen–and of course, when I get home, I do even more of that. I want to do other things, running and drawing and working out and cooking, and I only get from 1800 hrs to whenever I go to bed (ideally, 2200 hrs; realistically, 0200 hrs) for them.

Genuine insomniac Maria will probably blame herself for keeping me up, but it really has little to do with her. It’s been this way all summer, and in fact during most of senior year. Actually, the whole thing probably started junior year; sophomore year was the last time I remember regularly getting eight hours.

Man, this post kind of got away from me. All I meant to do was note that I felt really good after a good night’s sleep. I really am looking forward to school starting, because for the first time in my academic career, I’ll have no classes that start before 1100 hrs.

August 11, 2003 /

Okay! So! Babies!

Actually just one baby. Talking about Zoe reminded me that I still have my Chicago pictures and I’ve been meaning to post them forever; I was saving them for a rainy no-idea day, but lately the only time I’m not posting is when I’m working on stuff I’m going to post. So pictures! (Which open in a separate window.)

  • The one that inspired this whole post: There was this baby, and his name was Big Man, and he was the sweetest little bowling ball-sized human I’ve ever met. Naturally, I tried to eat his brains.
  • In all my time as a Crummy fan, it never occurred to me what a great band name The Cautious Mad Scientists would be.
  • Did you know they make lawnmowers you have to plug in? I didn’t, which is maybe why I find this team effort so funny.
  • Me and Eric, in the only extant picture of me playing frisbee.
  • Briefly, during one of the big group shots on the beach, I got to make mine a metacamera.
  • Something about me takes a deep joy in the vision of a sign that a) acknowledges the existence of and b) simultaneously tries to prevent peddlin’.
  • I was taking a perfectly nice close-range picture of my thumb until Kat got in the way.
  • Witness my first, second and third complete failures to get a picture of the shot-shy EmilyR. Who then posed quite nicely for all the obligatory group shots.
  • Oh, and lastly, having played basketball against stiff competition in inner-city Chicago, I believe I’m allowed to ask it: Who wants some?

August 11, 2003 /

It occurs to me that it’s only a matter of time until there’s a movie adaptation of The Bean Trees starring Ashley Judd as Taylor, and yea, my heart is like unto a cold sad rock in my chest. I liked that book. (I like Ashley Judd, too, just not when she’s acting.)

August 11, 2003 /

How many two-year-olds have their own weblogs? (Not enough!) If you don’t already read The Daily Zoe, you should, as it will consistently and significantly improve your outlook on life. It’s hard to feel bad about your day when you see the sheer amounts of attention and love surrounding that kid. Bonus: life-threatening cuteness!

Oh, and remind me to post something else about babies when I get home.

August 10, 2003 /

I got a new toaster oven this weekend, and I’m a little afraid of it. I am a huge fan of toaster ovens, which are both cuter and more wieldy than your typical harvest-gold Kenmore stove. Also, they actually allow you to SEE if your toast is getting overdone, which is plus ten points. (Why don’t they make toasters with glass sides? [Because the constant fluctuation in temperature would cause them to explode, showering you with glass.] Well still!)

Yet this toaster oven has me awed and a little frightened. My past experience with toaster ovens has been with old, comfy appliances, the kind that can dial all the way up to REDUCE TO CARBON and only achieve a kind of mild browning. My new toaster oven (suggestions on a name, anyone?), though, is a mite more enthusiastic. It’s the young, brash Loose Cannon from the buddy cop movie. It hits dark brown before the dial is even on medium, and I’m too scared to try the darkest setting on anything edible. I bet it could burst into flames.

Maria: ACK! Brendan, your toast has burst into flames!
Brendan: Oh no! Crap, get the extinguisher!
Maria: There’s no time! You’re going to have to throw it out the window!
Brendan: Aww MAN! (grabs oven mitts, shoulders aside balcony door and tosses toaster oven off with a smoky plume)
Maria: Where’d it go?
Brendan: I think it–
Maria: BRENDAN! You hit and killed that elderly philanthropist!
Toaster Oven: HA HA HA HU-MANS

Seriously, I do like it. It makes nachos and pot pies well, and those essential functions will serve it admirably. I was also going to buy this neat little eight-dollar Target waffle-maker; I abandoned the idea since the oven maxed out my toaster budget, but then Maria bought it anyway. This nearly doubles my breakfast-cooking options. If I learn to bake granola, I’ll be a breakfast bandit!

Maria: No, toaster oven, don’t! It’s too dangerous!
Toaster Oven: IT IS OVER FOR YOU, BREAKFAST BAN-DIT
Brendan: You’ll never take me alive, buddy coppers!
(hail of gunfire, and the smell of burned fingers)

August 10, 2003 /

Maria and I saw a church marquee the other day that read

GOD IS BIGGER

We figured it was the ontological argument for God’s existence at its highest possible compression.

For the record, I know that xorph.com is experiencing outages (well, besides the failure of its cartoonist). Deep Fried, my webhost, is getting really flaky because the colo facility from which it resells is also getting really flaky, which explains the problems I’ve had with PHP, ftp and email accounts. I’ll probably be moving to PHPWebhosting soon, as it comes highly recommended and seems to have everything I need. (Stephen, we may have to talk about this–where are you, anyway?)