Turkey day's a lot easier on you without, well, turkey. Mmmm.... lasagna.

"The Mystery of Courage" is an excellent book. Very well written, and the author treats the subject with respect. I especially like the idea that the threat of physical violence against insolence is important in maintaining civility.

¶ 4 Posted at 10.23 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books | me )

In my mind, sometimes, I'm already there. My house sits atop a hill, looking out over the sea. Below, waves lap at the beach. The air is heavy and sticky. As the sun sets, it becomes a giant red ball, bathing everything in a ruddy glow. Some times of the year, the region is beset by torrential downpours that drench everything, and thunder that rolls across the sky.

¶ 14 Posted at 03.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | me )

From yesterday afternoon to this morning we've been having freezing rain. Everything is coated with ice. Trees are slumped over like... well, you pick a metaphor. I took pictures. "So pretty." In the voice of Trina from Mad TV.

¶ 21 Posted at 03.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Two pictures for you. This is what happens in Vegas when you're just a little bit of a badass:

And this is what happens when a company doesn't do proper quality assurance. Conveniently discovered when cropping the above.

Nice. Real nice.

¶ 94 Posted at 10.35 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | travel )

Work. TV. Sleep. Eat. Rinse. Repeat.

¶ 95 Posted at 09.10 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

This is the sort of crap "journalism" I have to deal with living in Texas: 150 lawmakers + 150 psalms = match made in heaven. You'd think the only major newspaper in a large city would at least pretend to be unbiased, but it appears they have no compunction about pushing their Christian, right-wing agenda. I laugh when people call Austin liberal.

I was there: Violence mars Mardi Gras parties in Austin. The police were all in riot gear (helmets, body armor, clubs). Idiots in the crowd were throwing rocks and empty beer bottles at them from time to time. I was at 6th and some cross street (Neches or Red River, I think) near the Black Cat Lounge and those places. We went about a hundred feet off 6th to watch. They had blocked off 6th to the east by the time we'd gotten there because of (apparently) some fighting that had taken place earlier. There was a huge crowd facing them (eastward) on 6th, and a fair number off to the side where we were. Of course, we were far back from the front; we'd found some steps leading up to a side door in one of the buildings . The cops were pepper spraying people who got too close and acting belligerent (insulting the cops, flipping them off, etc.). They had these huge cans of pepper spray that would fire a 10 foot cloud. Every now and then a pocket of people would get spooked or sprayed and start running away from the cops. This went on for probably 20 minutes and then the reinforcements arrived (in the form of about 8 mounted police). After a couple minutes of waiting around, they went marching down 6th with about 15 or so walking troopers. There were still about 8 cops waiting in the intersection. After about 10 minutes they started heading down our way too. I figured (stupidly) since I was sticking by the side and not doing anything, I'd be left alone, but as the line of cops got close, it was made abundantly clear to me that I should get my ass moving. Luckily I'd parked on that side so we didn't have far to go. Of course, if I'd parked at the Post Office like I usually do, I never would have seen this. An interesting night, to say the least.

¶ 98 Posted at 10.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | me )

This morning I ironed my jeans. Sounds excessive, doesn't it? I mean, it's not like they were fancy jeans. No sir, just plain old Gap jeans. Not only did I iron them, I ironed them inside out. I decided I liked the color inside better than the outside color. For a half second, I seriously considered wearing my jeans inside-out. What does that say about me?

I've decided it would be genius to mix the Moloko club remix of "If You Go Away" by Shirley Bassey into the Quivver remix of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" by Led Zeppelin. But that's just me, and I'm not a DJ.

¶ 110 Posted at 10.04 AM ⇒ No Comments ( music | me | weird )

I've gotten asked where I get the weird links. It's not like I tried very hard; I stole them. The community of people who use the web the way people used it in the early middle days ('95 or so) has shrunk greatly (proportionally, of course). I mean, most of the people I know are early middle school web users (as in "old school," not as in 6th grade), but there are still some who follow the new pattern. Well, you follow one link to another to another, and pretty soon you're somewhere totally weird. But people generally don't do that anymore. There have been many statistics coming out over the last few years about the fact that an decreasingly (increasingly? I'm confused) smaller number of websites (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) is taking up an increasingly larger proportion of user time on the web. Part of that has to do with the sorts of users that are coming online. Part of that is that these big players are growing blob-like, adding more and more content and features in an effort to make it unnecessary to go anywhere else. I think, also, that part of the issue is (paradoxically) that there is too much selection out there. There are so many sites that one can like that eventually one's daily visit list becomes far too long to reasonably cover without one's eyes glazing over. I have some 25 sites in my daily list (of which I only have time to visit about 17, and I'm unemployed), another 15 regular (more frequently than weekly) comics, as well as 10 weekly sites. Then there's other, less regular ones, like reviews sites. Finally there are all the links to follow that I get from the above. It's a lot. For example, here's an easy way to find a bunch of decent weblogs. You can often find interesting weblogs by looking for weblog software and then seeing "these sites use us." They generally don't show off crappy sites, although if that's all they have, they will. But if you find, say, five sites for weblogging software (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), you can easily find links to sites using said software. And there goes your whole day.

I'm trying to move away from Blogger, see, into something a bit more full-featured. Unfortunately, some things are just a little too full-featured (slash). And some things aren't written in PHP. And some aren't Open Source (two things necessary for me to tinker with it). And so forth.

¶ 262 Posted at 04.36 AM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | me )

No, I'm not wearing lipstick in that picture. My lips just do that. Seriously. Stop hassling me.

¶ 283 Posted at 03.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I was inspired by reading about this guy's problem to write about my own, considerably less severe problem. In April of this year, I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with Attention Deficit Disorder. This was not an easy diagnosis to deal with. I had a pretty strong feeling that something was up, but when I received the diagnosis, I did not know how to react. For years I have been a chronic underachiever. Ever since middle school, my teachers would tell my parents, "He's smart and clever, but he just doesn't apply himself." I always thought I was just unmotivated. Easily distracted. A slacker. Or just plain lazy. I managed to get through high school in pretty decent shape. I was in the highest classes that the school offered, and in math had to go the University of Vermont. I can't really claim credit for any of that, because it all just sort of happened. I didn't try. I didn't apply myself. I didn't have to. I aced my college entrance exams and got into Rice University.

At that point, I hit a brick wall. I couldn't get by on doing the homework the night before, or not paying attention in lecture. I couldn't just take test and get an A-. Sometimes, I couldn't even get a C. I saw many people around me succeed when I was sure I was smarter than them. I couldn't figure it out. I thought I was lazy. For a time my pet theory was that they had struggled in high school while I was sailing through, and so had learned the Lesson of Hard Work. They knew how to study; I didn't. That's what I told myself. For a time, I even believed it. But as the semesters passed and I obstinately refused to learn how to study, I started to wonder. I mean, what was the deal? If I studied, I would do better. Like, duh. But I wasn't studying. There was a clear flaw in the machinery; I knew what it was, but I just couldn't make it go. It was crazy the things I would let myself do to distract myself from studying. We had Cinemax and HBO in the dorm, and I watched all of the worst movies released from 1997 to 1999. I fiddled around with my computer endlessly and grew ever more |33+ at Quake. It felt like I had this little creature living inside my head that would wake up whenever I started doing something productive. The longer I spent at the task (measured in minutes), the more frantic and energetic it got, figuratively bouncing off the walls inside my head to knock me away from my books. It always won (that didn't sound crazy, did it? I swear, it's just a metaphor). I got even worse with procrastination because I knew, even if I started something, there was no way I would be able to finish it, so there was no point in starting in the first place. 90% of the work of major projects got done the night before. I could only get work done earlier when I had a partner who made me sit there and work, and that was a rare thing. I started to dread school. I got to the point where I couldn't imagine succeeding at it. Somewhere in my junior year I started to think that maybe there was something more going on. How could I so thoroughly suck at school when I was so smart? ADD occurred to me, but I dismissed it. That wasn't me. I could sit still. Sure, I would constantly interrupt people. I would lose track of what people were saying in the middle of their sentences and start drumming on the table, or counting flecks of stone in the tile floor, or stare out the window. I didn't think much of it because it was normal. That's just how I was; I've never been anyone else so I had nothing to compare it to. Several times through the last few semesters it occurred to me to talk to a professional, to work out what I thought were "motivational issues," to figure out why I was sabotaging myself. I never got around to it. I would bomb some test and be really motivated to do something about it for about a day, at which point it was forgotten until I bombed another test. And then I would start thinking about it again. One time I just didn't write a final essay (exam equivalent. Luckily I was taking that class pass/fail). As time passed, though, I managed to maintain an equilibrium. I wasn't doing well, but I was on track to get my degree. Graduation inched closer. I would get a job, and then it would be fine.

After graduating with a mediocre GPA and a degree in Computer Science, I took a position at a startup in Austin called Motive Communications. It seemed pretty cool. I got a pretty excellent salary, and they barely asked me to do anything! I muddled along for the better part of a year working on minor projects, but not really getting involved in anything major. I partly blame my manager at the time, as he didn't actually manage me, but I didn't really take any initiative. I was happy just to coast along, just as I'd done before (prospective employers, please read to the end before reaching any conclusions :-). After about eight months "on the job," at the beginning of 2001, there was a corporate reorganization. I got a new manager. She did some checking around for a few weeks, and then I got sat down for a Serious Talk. Everybody thought I was a slacker. A waste of space. They all liked me, but they felt I wasn't contributing anything, and wondered what I was doing there. It was made clear to me that things had to change. This hit me like a ton of bricks. I had no idea. I should have suspected, but I genuinely did not see that coming. It would have been easy to blame my previous manager, but I had shown almost no initiative. I hadn't volunteered for any projects. I hadn't done anything to indicate that I was willing and able to justify my continued employment. The Serious Talk wasn't about firing me, though. It was about trying to get me to change my ways. I jumped at the chance. I had to. At this point, I again started to think about talking to a professional, but I pretty quickly got distracted again. Recognizing the limbo that I had been living in for so long, my new manager put me in charge of an unpleasant but essential task, writing installer packages for our server and miscellaneous other parts. It was tedious. It wasn't interesting. I thought it was a waste of my shiny new, $80,000 Rice diploma. But I had to prove myself, and so I tried. From mid-February until the end of March, I worked every weekend, occasionally both days. From mid-April until mid-June, I did the same, except I usually worked both days. I thought I had redeemed myself. In August, though, when reviews came, my manager (now back to the first one) gave me just an average performance rating. I thought I had been wronged, and to some extent, it was true. But it was also true that my ten hour days weren't the same as other people's ten hour days. I would go to the gym, knocking off a couple hours in the late morning. I would socialize with my co-workers. When I was at my desk, I would always be jumping from one thing to another. I literally could not work five minutes without switching to something else. Just like in school, I had this frantic bouncing around in my head anytime I tried to apply myself. The Internet was my enemy. I would write down random thoughts and send them via email to my friends, no doubt provoking confusion and bemusement. Slashdot, Ars Technica, the New York Times, and many other web sites commanded my attention, at least for a few minutes. These distractions easily stole me away from work, and then would fight amongst themselves for my attention until I managed to squeeze in another few minutes of coding. The outline was becoming clearer and cleared, and I knew Something Had To Be Done. This time I got as far as getting a list of ADD specialists in my area and even getting a new patient form from one of them. After a couple weeks, though, this got dropped by the wayside as work cranked up again and I felt like I was making progress, even though I was in the same pattern. Again, I started working all weekend, which did not do good things for my nascent Relationship. She was understanding, perhaps too much so. I didn't have to choose between her and work; I had to make my work hours actually count. But just like in school, once the negative feedback faded, I forgot about trying to do anything to fix my problem. I wasn't sure there was a problem; I just wasn't motivated. I was lazy. I thought I just needed to get ahold of myself and grow up. Then came September 11, and an already crippled economy was sent into a tailspin. Motive missed its numbers, hard. On October 15, the hammer fell. I lost my job. I am absolutely certain I would not have lost my job if I had been better able to focus on it. I wouldn't have that early limbo as a strike against me, and I would have been more effective later. I had allowed myself to believe that there wasn't a permanent problem there, that I could just go on as normal and everything would be fine. I was wrong. Again.

In December, after two months of unemployment, a friend threw me a bone and offered me a job at his company. I'd worked there before, so it was an easy transition. We both understood it to be a temporary arrangement while I looked for something more permanent, but I worked regular hours and was just like any other employee. In April, there was a screwup at work. I got ripped a new one. Something was different about my disappointment and anger that time. I was thoroughly disgusted with my own inaction, and I'd had enough. I called the insurance company to find specialists in ADD. This time I got far enough to actually set an appointment. That meant I was committed; the appointment was the big step. After that, it was just little steps leading one to the next. I went and talked to the shrink. It was pathetically easy. He asked a bunch of questions. I gave a bunch of answers. He reached his decision. He said I was ADD. I was unable to pay attention, but I displayed no hyperactivity. He gave me a prescription. Adderall, it was. I picked a generic drug because of my insurance and money situation. Basically, Adderall is speed. It's only slightly different from the trucker speed that powers the nation's cross-country freight and shipping industry. The first couple times I took it, I didn't notice anything. I would take it shortly before going to work, after my lunch, as recommended, but my days didn't seem any different. It was the bare minimum dosage, so after a couple days of nothing, I doubled it, again taking it just before going to work. After about half an hour, I started to notice the effect of the stimulant. I felt a little tense. My heart was beating more strongly. I was more aware. That was all well and good, but not particularly helpful. I started working on one of my projects. It was in the late afternoon when I realized that I had been working steadily for a good three hours. I hadn't checked my sites. I hadn't written meandering emails to my friends to pass the time. I hadn't gotten up just to walk around. I had just worked. It was amazing. Nothing like that had ever happened before. It wasn't anything extraordinary, and yet it was. I had managed to work continuously. I wasn't crazy. I wasn't like those people you read about reshingling their roofs at 4am. The obvious stimulant effects had settled. I was pretty much my normal self, just focused. I couldn't believe it.

Maybe it would help to describe exactly what felt different about it. One part of my brain would send the signals, but they just wouldn't get through. I still feel this now when I'm not medicated. I will find myself doing some odd, meaningless fidget, or picking at loose paint chips, or pulling at hangnails, instead of vacuuming or organizing my bookshelf, without realizing how I got from productive work to mindless dithering. When I get into a real rut, I feel like I am not even in control of my own body. Frivolous urges appear and are immediately translated into action, no matter what I'm doing at the time. It's like part of my brain is playing some kind of Jedi mind trick on the other parts. It is completely different on the medication; finally I understand what people mean when they say they got too involved in what they were doing and lost track of time. That never happened to me before. Sure, I would be late, but I would always be conscious of it; I would feel time ticking by as I dawdled. Now, though, I find myself being late because I am deeply enmeshed in working on something. It's an amazing feeling. It's obviously a problem, but it is one I know I can tackle.

To this day, I don't trust the diagnosis. I know ADD and ADHD are real. I have seen them in effect in other people. It is in respected literature on psychology and psychiatry and neurochemistry. There are plausible physiological explanations that have something to do with defects in dopamine metabolism. Sure. But me? This is a "mental disorder." I'm not crazy. I'm not a mental defective. I'm not a danger to myself or others. I don't have rages, I'm not violent, and I'm not clinically depressed. My therapist has valiantly tried to convince me of the validity of the diagnosis, but has made little headway, in spite of the efficacy of the "treatment." I've seen the willingness of parents and teachers to medicate away their problems. There is a general consensus that ADD/ADHD is over-diagnosed in children. I have an inherent distrust of diagnoses of ADD/ADHD because it looks like the easy way out. Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, clinical depression... those are real. You can observe someone and see their mental disorders happen. No such thing with ADD, not for me. The psychiatrist just asked me a bunch of questions. There was no observation, no chemical tests, no nothing. I could have easily manufactured the appropriate answers to get the diagnosis if I had wanted to, although I was honest in my responses. No one ever had asked me to consider the possibility; it had never occurred to anyone watching my behavior that I might have ADD/ADHD. I find that troubling. Obviously the people who seek consultations are more likely to be afflicted than the general population. But I still wonder how many people show up and hear, "No, you're just unmotivated." They say it's only 5% of the population, but it seems to me that they diagnose it far more. It's a very smooth gradient. On one end are the ones who are clearly not afflicted. On the other end are those who obviously have a chemical disorder that makes them unable to focus and sit still. And then I am somewhere in the middle. They say that Adderall will make people who don't have ADD unable to focus. They will become distracted and hyperactive. So if it works on me, then I must have ADD? How could anyone accept that reasoning? I know I need more to convince me. I don't even really believe I have ADD. I say "I have been diagnosed with ADD." I can't make myself say "I have ADD."

But it works. I mean, it really, really works. It's amazing. I like to program for fun because I'm a big dork. But I never managed to stick to any project of my own for more than a couple weeks. And when I was working on it, I could only manage a few hours of half-assed work at a time. I had to have the external motivator of money to keep me on track, and even that wasn't enough, as I learned the hard way. But now? This site you are reading is 7000 lines of code that I wrote and debugged and rewrote over a period of over three months. I would never have had the focus and determination to do that before. More important than being able to work just because I want to, however, is the mental clarity I have. They stressed to me when I first started down this path that "the medication will not make you do what you don't want to do." It won't motivate me. It won't make me want to do laundry or pay bills or fix that dent in my car. Fine. I can handle that. Before, there were three possible reasons why I didn't do something important: I didn't want to, I procrastinated, or I couldn't maintain any momentum. The medication is targeted at just the last one, but there is more to it. Those three reasons used to be muddled together before. If you asked me three times why I hadn't studied for a test, I would give you three different answers. I didn't know why I didn't do things; I just didn't do them. Now, it's different. With the help of the medication, I can maintain my momentum. When I start a project, I will only stop working on it for a good, legitimate reason. I won't just stop because I stopped. This makes a huge impact on my procrastination. I mentioned before that I would avoid starting projects because I knew I couldn't finish them. Now I know I can finish them if I want to, so I'm no longer intimidated. The dread that school inspired in me is completely gone because I know I can make good on my potential. Because I'm no longer afraid of trying, it has also made me much better at recognizing what I really want to do. Before, when I lost my motivation for a project, it was easy to think that I just didn't want to do it. Now that I've addressed the attention issue, and indirectly the procrastination issue, I can tell understand my motivation a lot, more clearly. I can tell when I am just tired, or not in the mood to sit in front of the computer, or when I genuinely lack interest in pursuing a project. It's liberating, and it's only an indirect result of the medication.

Every day, Jessica and I play the jumble and compare times. There was a time that I would give up if I didn't get the answer in a five minutes or so. I would just get too frustrated and antsy and distracted. However, since May, when I was diagnosed, I haven't given up. Not once. This has nothing to do with medication; in fact, I usually do it late at night; if I was medicated then, it would be impossible for me to sleep. It has everything to do with my slowly building determination stimulated by, but not because of, my treatment. I won't allow myself to give up. I get perversely proud when I solve the jumble after 6 minutes. After 9 minutes. After 11 minutes. Once, I even went 16 minutes before I solved a simple word puzzle. A stupid, easy, trivial little game that should have taken me 30 seconds, a game where I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out one six letter anagram. One word. 15 minutes. And I didn't give up. I am more proud of that feat than I am of graduating from high school. Every time I succeed, my discipline gets just a little bit stronger. Every time I succeed, I strengthen my resolve, and make it more likely that, the next time my will is challenged, I will win. I am thoroughly conscious of my inching progress, and that makes me more determined keep going.

I'm still conflicted about this. I only told a few people when I first went to the psychiatrist; with the exception of Jessica, they were all people who are very far away. I didn't tell my best friends for two months. I didn't tell my parents for four months. Most of my friends still don't know; many of you are reading this now and wondering why I didn't mention it. What was I supposed to say? I expected them all to react the way my mother did: "How could you have ADD?" I didn't fit with her expectation of what someone with ADD was like. I can relate; I don't even fit with my expectation. But the people I have told didn't generally react that way. For most of them, it was: "Oh. Well, I'm glad you did something about it and that it's helping." That was that. Really, though, it doesn't matter. I have to do what's right for me, and for people around me to raise vague, uninformed objections is just selfish. The medication hasn't given me anything that wasn't already there; it has just removed a block that stood for 24 years. I can't argue with that, in spite of my misgivings. I finally know what I am capable of. I am freed from the clouds and confusion that obscured my judgment, and seeing more clearly every day. Two weeks ago, I started a new job. My first day, after all the orienting and paperwork in the morning, I worked until 7pm, long after most of my new co-workers had left. I was absolutely determined to get something useful done before I went home. And I did. I didn't give up. Every day since then has been further proof that I am making progress. I do a good job. So what next? Am I fated to spend the rest of my life tethered to my 10mg speed pills, once or twice a day? I certainly hope not. But I also know I can't do without that for now. I tried for years to function effectively without medication, and only got by on luck and innate ability (i.e., more luck). I look forward to a future where I am weaned off the medication and can live my life normally like anyone else. Until then, though, I will do what I have to do.

¶ 445 Posted at 01.53 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

New pictures. Tom's Halloween party.

¶ 453 Posted at 02.59 PM ⇒ No Comments ( pictures | me )

I might have forgotten to mention. I am unemployed again. I can't say I'm unhappy about it. The people I was working for seem to slowly be realizing that they have no business model. Half of the company got let go on Friday; no doubt the other half will follow in the not-too-distant future.

¶ 458 Posted at 02.05 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | me )

I seem to have been invaded by some microbial conquistadors. My gut has become a hard-hat zone with no detour around the damaged areas. It is a fun time.

Today I got thrust in front of a couple hundred people at a Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund conference. I talked about open source/free software and the weblog phenomenon/hype/trend. I guess I did ok. Afterwards people wanted my opinion and stuff. It was weird.

I'm going to go not eat now. You did get the "hard-hat" joke, right?

¶ 489 Posted at 06.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I just noticed that I am now the #1 (my resume on ketan.org) and #2 (this site) results on google searches for "Ketan Gangatirkar." It's about time, considering I haven't played Diplomacy in years, and those are the majority of hits out there. These sites are also the #1 and #2 hits for "Gangatirkar." Google also seems to do the right thing on simple misspellings of my last name. Astonishingly, there are now Gangatirkars online who are not people I know (thankfully); it's a rare name in India too. Ironically one of the hits is on a fansite for the band The Police; I just added their greatest hits compilation to my wish list yesterday. I'd better pick up gangatirkar.com before it's too late.

¶ 494 Posted at 02.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | me )

Thanks to my new job, I have gotten for free a SXSW Interactive pass. Speakers and panelists include Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig (who you may remember from Eldred vs. Ashcroft, Joshua Davis, Matthew Haughey, Dan Gillmor, Po Bronson, and a bunch more. God. The worst part of this is having to choose which one to attend. For example, "Surviving Your Own Collaborative Project" and "Freelance Forum: Going Solo" are both at the same time on Monday. If I get too far ahead of myself, I dream of participating more actively next year with amphetameme and crankpot.

¶ 499 Posted at 01.47 PM ⇒ No Comments ( interesting | internet | me )

Yesterday I swam 2000 yards at the UT pool. I managed that in about 44 minutes, which is a far cry from the first time I went 6 weeks ago, when I barely managed 650 yards in 25 minutes and spent 45 minutes lyind on the bench in the locker room trying not to puke. Aside from being better at swimming, though, I've noticed no real effect. I still weigh in at a, ahem, "sturdy" 180 lbs., but maybe I can move it around.

¶ 501 Posted at 04.09 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

After some discussion with mute, we both agreed that there is now no way for the United States to withdraw from Iraq. At this point, the least bad outcome is to win. That realization put me in a foul mood. Up to this point, I had held out hope that the situation was salvageable, that there was some way for it not to end badly. Now I have resigned myself there being no good options, only bad ones and worse ones. I realized that I've given up hope. That was the worst for me. I never give up. Anyone who's ever disagreed with me knows that. It's just not me. Now, though, I have given up, and it's terrible. I hate George Bush for making that happen. I hate him for taking my hope away.

¶ 520 Posted at 10.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | politics | iraq )

I just returned from Colorado Springs. My job sent me to this conference on "community networking." i.e., non-profits, municipalities, and other non-corporate institutions looking to use the Internet and technology to improve their services and offer new ones. It was more of a meet-n-greet type of thing than a "do stuff" thing. I got to stretch my schmoozing muscles. I was by far the youngest and least-qualified person there, probably because I was a sub for my "boss."

The conference was at the Garden of the Gods Club (not a hotel). It was pretty swank. My suite was bigger than my apartment. Hell, the bathroom was almost bigger than my apartment (not really). The back balcony faced the Garden of the Gods (a rock formation) and then Pike's Peak beyond. I'll upload pictures shortly. The club was one of those exclusive ones that always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Conservative money. I have a visceral (anagram of "claviers") reaction to places like that. Eh.

I got window seats on both flights back. Colorado is very brown right now. There are dry streambeds all over the place. Most of them were invisible, but it was quite clear where they were because of the threads of trees snaking across an otherwise barren landscape. As the terrain changed, there were more and more canyons carved out by these rather small streams. The brown landscape was broken up by these rugged canyons which were filled with trees. It was very fractal. On the DFW-Austin flight, I managed to figure out where we were relatively early. I think I identified I-35, then Waco. I picked out Round Rock, 620, Mopac, 183, Braker, 360, and 290 as they appeared. It was cool.

Airplanes are optimal places for LANs. What they need to do is mount 9 cameras on the bottom of the plane, looking forward, backward, left, right, and in between, which would be served via streaming media on the LAN. Airplanes would make a good testbed for a resilient network model that would be smarter about security threats (like business travelers carrying Code Red on their laptops). Then there's the coolness factor of playing Doom III against a friend, or streaming a DVD so you both could watch. Yes. Gigabit ethernet on airplanes. Genius, I tell you.

¶ 523 Posted at 08.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas | me | genius | (un)employment )

I've reached the conclusion that the most interesting weblogs (ignoring webloggers that cheat by being your friends) are the ones that exude personality through their writing (bang brooklyn ¶, for example). I've been too fixated on the name and the visual design, when what I need to work on is writing style. This is more than a weblog thing; whenever I need to write anything I clutter it up with too many useless words. Qualifiers, quantifiers, etc. I also rarely make strong emotional statements, and when I do, they're limited to using words like "hate," "cool," or "neat." Boo. Then there's not so much personal stuff either. There are a whole lot of reasons for that. The end result is that my writing is stuffy and tedious. My writing is a reflection of me. Hopefully only one of the two preceding statements is true. So. More personality. Fewer, better-chosen words. Not just because it makes for a better weblog, but it's no fun to be writing something badly and know you're doing it as you do it. Plus I'll have to write a bunch of stuff for my job from time to time, and I'd rather it didn't suck.

¶ 526 Posted at 12.19 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | site )

I need to learn how to relax. Apparently other people don't have nearly the same enthusiasm that I do. And even when they have the enthusiasm, they are more inwardly focused. I attack. I pounce. It is, I am told, overwhelming. Tom says I scare people sometimes. Oops. Even worse is when I have energy but no focus, because then I go hungrily searching for something to fixate on, and it comes across as neediness. I just have way more drive and endurance than other people do, and I need to learn to regulate it. There is clearly a place for aggressive people who push and push and push; it's how big things get done. But I'm not off doing big things most of the time. I'm not even doing them some of the time. So I just need to chill out. I need to learn how to let things go. That is not something that comes easily to me, as you well know. I sink my teeth into things and shake them until their necks break. And then some more. I just get impatient. Excited. This pretty clearly comes from my dad. To see him and his brother and my grandfather going at it is something unreal, even for me. The smallest bit of trivia gets endlessly dissected. They clearly derive great enjoyment from it. So do I. But most people aren't like that. More importantly, most people don't know how to deal with that. Even Jessica still hasn't gotten a handle on it. So I must adapt. I must learn to live in the real world with normal people. Otherwise I'll keep frustrating people and getting frustrated back, and that's just no good.

¶ 535 Posted at 04.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Jothan thinks I'm Indian, not neurotic. He thinks it's cultural, which makes some sense. That doesn't mean it isn't often a negative in my life here, of course.

I am thinking the answer I seek is pretty straightforward: shut up. First of all, I enjoy conversation a lot more than your average person. I noticed this when I was leaving work yesterday and ran into a woman I've talked to a little. She made some small comment and I immediately started a conversation around it. I have a tendency to treat any opening statement that isn't a standard salutation as an invitation to extended conversation. That is not what most people intend, though.

Second, when you strike up a casual conversation with someone and all of a sudden the firehose opens, you immediately think he/she has been looking desperately for someone (anyone!) who will listen to them. And now you're trapped with a lonely person who has found a victim.

Third, there's the intimidation factor. Who wants to fight the onslaught? It's exhausting. Most people aren't that aggressive and adversarial, though a lot of my friends are. Probably because they're the only ones who could hold up against it.

Fourth, there is the engagement factor. If someone else is dominating the conversation, it can be difficult to feel invested. I don't do a good job of drawing people out, though I can be pretty good at bullying people out (obviously not the same thing). And since I am such a brilliant thinker, I cover all the bases and make it difficult for others to contribute meaningfully. Indeed, in a conversation about a particular subject, it may be worthwhile to leave out something obvious to give the other person/people an easy opener.

Fifth is the mystery factor, for lack of a better term. When you gush, you give people the impression that they know all there is to know about you. Regardless of whether that is true, they don't really feel there is much more to learn, so they're not particularly motivated to find out.

Sixth, when you talk a lot, you make people think you just aren't that interested in them. That is frequently the case for me; boring people make a good audience. However, I also do it to people who are interesting.

It's an easy answer, at least in theory. That's fine. That's what I wanted. Whether it's correct has yet to be determined, but I've never tried it before, so I don't know that it's wrong. I think working on drawing people out gently is a good skill to have just for its own sake. Furthermore, it's a skill that I need to develop for my career as well, considering the direction I'm now going. Being able to engage people will potentially help me a lot.

¶ 538 Posted at 12.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

So my application for graduate school got rejected. I had applied over the winter to the Master of Science program in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering here at UT. I'd been considering it since last spring, but my motivation went into overdrive during the first three hours of my job at Fly.

ORIE is a discipline that straddles the boundaries between several fields. It deals with analysis and structured decision making. Designing processes, whether they be industrial manufacturing, or something more abstract. ORIE grew partly out of the logistical challenges the Allies faced in WWII. It appealed to me for many reasons. It was a significant departure from software, which I don't see has being a great long-term career. It is a field that focuses on the essence of engineering process as applied to many different arenas. The breadth of applicability was enticing. The strategies for decision making was also a big draw, which is probably not a surprise. It would have been a chance to take a significantly different path into a more specialized, rarefied career. Plus I would have had a master's degree instead of a dinky little bachelor's degree. I want a real degree.

I'm guessing there were three major factors involved in their decision. The first was almost certainly my mediocre undergraduate record. I included the ADD business in my application, but I think they may have lost that part, as they lost the transcript I had given them at the same time. Secondly, there were probably many applicants this year due to the economy. And thirdly, they might not have taken my application as seriously as other applications, as I was coming from a different field and had a spotty employment record.

On the whole, it doesn't really matter much to me. Even had I been accepted, I probably would not have attended (though I would have deferred for a year just to be safe). I would have liked to be accepted to stroke my ego, but that's really all. I have a good, steady job now, which makes it less necessary for me to explore less conventional options. Then there's the house I'm buying, which would make it pretty tough to take two years off to go to school, and I don't relish the idea of working and studying at the same time. And finally, my current job has the potential to take a career arc away from strictly being a programmer, which is partly what I was looking for from ORIE. Besides, this isn't the end, just one end. There's nothing that says I can't try again in the future, and odds are pretty good that I will. The reasons that I wanted to do it haven't changed; it's mainly the practicality that has. So if the opportunity arises five or ten years down the road, I can give it another shot.

I only applied to one school because it didn't seem practical to go anywhere other than UT-Austin. There were other schools with programs that are just as good or better, but I have too much here to leave behind. I did look at other cities when I was looking for jobs, but that was different. If I was going to be a poor student, I'd want to do it in Austin, where I knew people and my way around. Maybe things will be different the next time around.

At least I had an excuse to take the GRE (whose ass I kicked six ways from Sunday, thank you very much, although I'm still pissed about running out of time on the Analytical with 1 question left, which prevented me from getting a perfect score). My ego to date was completely based on my SAT scores from high school. That was 7 years ago, and their shelf-life for bragging has long since expired. Now I have some other standardized test scores to use as the basis for my sense of self, which should keep me going for a while.

¶ 561 Posted at 11.18 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I'm going to be mostly unreachable for a couple days while we move. FYI. No net access till work on Monday.

¶ 565 Posted at 08.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | house )

Shortly, I will be departing for Seattle to meet people I have never met before (also some I have met before). We will be "roughing it." No Tivo. No MP3s. No (pause for dramatic effect) Internet. Savages. I will return to civilization on Sunday.

¶ 573 Posted at 07.15 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I have returned from my expedition to the deep North. We declare it an unqualified success. A good time was had by all. More later. Right now I must suckle at the teat of sweet, life-giving Internet.

¶ 574 Posted at 11.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Seattle trip was excellent. I got to meet mute ("Michael") and vi ("Eric") in person for the first time. Tom and Jeanie were also there (and are still there). There was some difficulty translating from IRC names to Real Life names, but that was handled. Thursday, we just kind of hung out. We went to Pike's Market and walked around downtown a little. Later, we met Jessica's high school chum and went to the (allergen-infested) Japanese Gardens.

Friday morning, we (having added mute's sister and two of his cool work pals) drove out to the Pacific coast of Olympic National Park. We hiked down to Third Beach, and then south over a headland to another beach apparently called "Scotts Bluff" (PDF map link; head east from the word "NATIONAL" floating in the Pacific Ocean to find it). It was about 2-3 miles, which was quite the impact on my back until mute helped me properly adjust the super awesome pack I'd borrowed from Andrew. Then most of the weight was on my hips and the pain centers shifted to my legs. We camped on a rocky/sandy beach about 20 feet from the ocean. Everyone else had backpacking tents and sleeping bags, but since I'm not particularly outdoorsy, I neither had one nor wanted to buy one, so we used an old one that Jessica's mom had. It was gigantic, clearly a "hop out of the car and camp" tent, not a "hike through miles of wilderness and camp" tent. I dubbed it the "campeterium." So we slept on the beach and hiked back the next morning. I've got lots of pictures, but they wouldn't do it justice. I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

We got back in early saturday evening and went to some Chinese faux meat restaurant. Then we stopped briefly in a bar at the Hotel W, and went back to the hotel. Sunday morning, mute met up with us again. We went out for breakfast and then briefly met the little mutelings (Evan, Sarah, Zoe, and Jack), as well as mrs. mute. Them's is some cute kids. Our time was too short, though, so we had to run off to the airport and fly away.

All in all, it was a pretty great trip. I sort of wish we'd stayed longer; that was partly a planning mistake, but mostly a money thing. With a new job and a new house, I didn't think I could really justify a more extended stay. We're already planning on going back, though; the travelling was low-impact enough that we could just go when we want. Jessica and I both want to see Portland and Vancouver, so maybe that'll happen in the not-too-distant future, though we have many other trips to take as well, while we can. Right now I'm eyeing January or February 2005, with part of the trip being an expedition up to Whistler in Beautiful British Columbia (I think that's the official province name now; it says that on their license plates) for some skiing. I have 132 pictures which I might actually upload at some point, though I hate my photo script. Besides, they wouldn't really do them justice; cameras (that I can afford) have much too small of a field of view, especially in the horizontal.

¶ 575 Posted at 02.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

A lot of people complain about the heat in Texas. But I was driving home this evening as the sun was setting, and the sky was that pink-orange, and I was just happy. I really, really, really like summer. It's wonderful. Every time I go outside in the evening or night I appreciate it. Even during the day, when it's like a furnace, I still like it, especially since everything is over-air conditioned. I love summer.

¶ 584 Posted at 10.56 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Now that we're out of college, it gets tough maintaining close friendships. You just don't spend enough time with other people. There are some people that can go years without seeing someone and then pick up right where they left off, like some kind of bdelloid rotifer after centuries frozen in Antarctica. Strained metaphors notwithstanding, that is not something I do. I need regular and constant contact. It doesn't have to be in person; it just has to be there. It also has to be frequent enough that its content is meaningless. When you connect with someone infrequently, you always go to the big things to summarize the incommunicado period: I bought a house. I got a new job. I had a sex-change operation. If that's the scale on which you communicate, you're not in enough contact. If, however, you focus on a movie you just saw, or remember that drama teacher with the horrible comb-over, or anything else of basically little consequence, that to me is a sign that you're in the zone for maintaining a friendship.

So where does that lead? It is pretty clear how that applies when you are far away and the mode of communication is email or instant messages, or somesuch. It becomes more complicated when you live in the same town. Then a set of different problems comes into play. It can be tricky getting together. The natural thing to do is to go out somewhere, but that tends to be expensive, exhausting, and not really very effective. There are just too many distractions; you need uncomplicated hanging out time. You go out to less conventional places than restaurants and bars, but I think over time, you run dry. Once you go to Lake Travis, the Hill Country, Six Flags, the Japanese Gardens, or whatever, you're done. Either you run out of places to go, or you have to really stretch and scrape the bottom of the barrel. And really, all of that just beats around the bush. The point isn't to go somewhere; the point is to spend time together.

As I see it, for regular hanging out, nothing beats your own place. The common problem there is that half of the people will feel pressure to entertain, and the other half will feel a need to be entertained. The former is because, well, it's your house. It's boring. You feel like you need something more for your guests than just yourself. And your guests will feel like guests, which means just sitting around will feel awkward*.

As result, it falls to you to come up with something for you to do. The parameters have to be pretty precisely calculated. It has to be casual and simple, so that your attention isn't fully taken up by it. But it also has to be engaging enough that you can focus on it when there's a lull. A variable pace is key. Things that have worked reasonably well in the past have been television shows and card games, specifically poker. Television is a tricky one, though; it has to be something you can talk through. For me, "Enterprise" is a good one because it's kind of entertaining by itself, but the best part is just making fun of it. "Six Feet Under" probably wouldn't work. I think pretty much any card game would work. Some board games also, although I realize how monumentally square this sounds. My parents seem to have gotten the hang of this. They play bridge monthly, but really, the bridge is an excuse to get together and shoot the breeze. Anyone who's looking to just play bridge is going to be a little disappointed**.

Now that we're getting old and sleepy, that's the sort of thing we need. Forget going out. Forget big dinner parties where you're running around making sure the souffle rises properly. Forget elaborate, convoluted ways to get people together without admitting that's what you're trying to do. Just focus on something simple. It should not be a big to-do to spend time with your friends, but it is also unreasonable to think you can just get together in a big room and that's all you need. There aren't many people and relationships that work that way. Find something that keeps your interaction orbiting at the right level, and you're good to go. Just make sure you all recognize it's a means and not an end. Now that we're old and busy, friends don't happen by accident***.

For now, I'll forego my bit about how you shouldn't feel awkward around your friends.
Like anyone who's looking for design tips is going to be disappointed by shows like "Trading Spaces" that are really about creating false drama. I have very strong feelings about shows like that. Against them, mainly.
Unless you only want to be friends with co-workers.
Yes, I realize how dorky it is to use footnotes in a weblog post.

¶ 592 Posted at 02.55 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

19-month old children are cute, filth-ridden vectors of contagion. One such has infected me with St. Lou Flu. Or probably just a cold. One of those very similar illnesses. It's made my permanent sympathetic infections in my tonsils flare up also. I skipped work yesterday and am probably going to skip today also. It's a good time.

Beware: it's the cuteness that gets you.

¶ 597 Posted at 09.09 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Other people will be a source of constant disappointment. And you can't change that. You can't even communicate it. The best you can do is find people who, by some amazing coincidence, are less of a disappointment. Wish me luck.

¶ 610 Posted at 11.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | bummer )

So, I'm getting married. Surprise.

¶ 613 Posted at 04.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I haven't felt like posting lately. No reason. Just is. I finished "Quicksilver." It improved as it progressed, or maybe I just got used to it. In the end, it was pretty satisfying, but it could and should have been better.

Wedding preparations are inching forward. We haven't picked a date or time yet, though, and seeing as everything else hinges on that, there isn't much to report.

¶ 615 Posted at 01.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I still getting married. I am not freaking out. It just feels normal. That is unexpected. I have time, though. I wouldn't want to disappoint.

¶ 617 Posted at 03.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

So, wedding plans coalesced very quickly this weekend. We've got pretty much everything planned and set up. Are you ready for it? Here it is: nothing. Yup. Nothing. In short, it costs too much money (out of my pocket, mind you) and is too stressful. Frankly, we'd rather put the money into a house. We didn't think it was very smart to begin our lives together by blowing thousands of dollars on a wedding. Not an effective use of my (soon to be "our") capital. So that's that. We're still going to get married next summer, but it'll be an appointment at City Hall or something like that. No big fuss. Don't feel bad; now you don't have to get us a gift.

¶ 619 Posted at 09.34 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

You can ignore this. I've been trying to track down a friend from middle school off and on for the years I've been Internet-enabled, with no results. So if you're out there, hopefully Google will do all the work. I couldn't find him. He hasn't tried to find me. So this post will serve to help him come here to find himself. Keywords follow. Richard Clayton. I think his middle name may have been Edwin. Or Edward. Richard Edward Clayton. Richard Edwin Clayton. Albert D. Lawton Middle School in Essex Junction, Vermont. Essex Junction High School. Essex High School. That's about it, I guess.

¶ 625 Posted at 05.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Every now and then, I get to thinking about living abroad. I haven't left the country in about 4 years, now. Nor am I likely to take many trips in the near-to-medium future; I just have too many things to pay for. Besides, that's just not satisfying to me. I feel a certain tension when I'm away from home that makes vacations stressful to me. It's not that I don't like going places; it's that I don't like being away from home. A strategy that worked at least once was to move my home. That was the summer of 1998, when I lived in Boston. That worked out pretty well. So when I think about wanting to see the world, it's in the context of living there.

Of course, I haven't made it easy to do. Buying a house and getting married make this sort of thing tough. But it's still doable; my parents did two and a half years in Germany when I was young. It really is a question of money and will. Right now, I'm just not the commodity that someone would want to pay to move me abroad. I had thought that an MS in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering would have helped to make me such a commodity, but that was not meant to be. Now that I have a house and a fiancee, even if I reapplied and got accepted, that won't be possible over the next few years. I could join some multinational like IBM or a consulting company, but that just seems unpleasant. I've had as much experience with IBM proper as I care to.

So, in order for this to work, I need to get this whole career thing sorted out. I'm not going to get anywhere by being a better programmer; I'm pretty good, I think, but not enough so. I'm certain I have unique talents, but I have yet to find a way to apply them in a way that makes me practically differentiable in a job market where programmers are a commodity. I don't think a talent for bad puns can be monetized, except perhaps through an extortion scheme. So until I figure out what makes me special that is worth paying extra for, it's going to have to wait. Luckily (or unluckily), that's something I'm going to have to figure out anyway.

Now, assuming I got that far, where would I want to go? A big problem is the language barrier. My experiment with German in college indicated to me that I might not have the aptitude for languages now that I did at a younger age. So learning a new language would be a daunting hurdle. I know French fairly well, and I think a few weeks of practice would scrape off the rust. I also think I could pick up Spanish, and possibly Italian. So mix and match those, and my short list looks like this (no meaningful order):

• Australia
• New Zealand
• Singapore
• UK
• France, preferably south
• Italy, preferably northwest, along the coast
• Spain, preferably Mediterranean coast
• Argentina

There are a couple that are iffy that aren't on the list, like South Africa. Too many problems. India is a huge mess also, not to mention (though I'm a little ashamed to admit it) the language barrier. As you can tell, I like the northwest Mediterranean coast. Canada's not on the list because, well, it's Canada. The whole point is to do something different. I do know, though, if I found a job in one of these places that paid comparably to what I could get in the US, and it wasn't a huge hassle with paperwork, etc., I'd be gone in a heartbeat. The house would just have to sort itself out.

Next time, maybe I'll talk about moving somewhere within the US.

¶ 626 Posted at 10.52 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

We have provisionally decided on a July 4th weekend wedding. July 4th itself is Sunday, so we may end up doing it the 2nd or the 3rd. On either Saturday or Sunday, we will have a big party at the house. Then we will jet off somewhere nice.

¶ 627 Posted at 10.49 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I have a potentially really good essay in me that I can't get out. It's not ready. It's been steeping for about 8 months in various forms; I don't know what it's waiting for. Sure would be neat if I could write.

¶ 634 Posted at 09.00 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | me )

The cliche is that we become set in our ways as we age. I would argue that half of that is simply learning what our ways are. You can't become set in your ways at 18 because very few of us know them. I guess that falls under the rubric of "finding yourself," but I always thought that was a silly phrase.

¶ 641 Posted at 10.15 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | me )

I have a very fully-developed philosophy of gifts. I feel very strongly about the proper way to do things. I have formulated this philosophy as a set of rules. Don't take it personally if you have broken these rules in giving things to me; I realize that I am far outside the mainstream in my views. Not that I think I'm wrong, mind you; my way of doing things is of course superior, but I also realize this is an irrationally high standard that I myself don't regularly meet. There are also several restrictions. One is that these rules only work for people you know well. Another thing is that they only apply to certain gift giving situations, like birthdays or Christmas. Occasions such as weddings and baby showers are completely different affairs.

As a general rule, you should give your recipient something they want, but would never buy for themselves. A lot of people feel guilty about buying something "frivolous" for themselves. Lift that burden from their shoulders by doing it for them. The reverse of that is to buy something your recipient doesn't know what they want. There are tons of examples that I could mention but I won't because I'm saving them up.

Ideally, your gift is also something that nobody else would think to give them. Remember, your consideration is an important part of the act. If it's something that could have only come from you, that magnifies its effect.

Don't be too afraid to buy something practical. Jessica has bought me an impressive chef's knife and a nice cordless drill. The difference between that and buying a housewife a new vacuum is a very simple one. If it's something they like doing, it doesn't matter that it's practical. Don't buy something for doing the chores.

If you know your recipient has particular tastes in one type of good/service and you don't know much about it, you're often better off trying something else. Almost nobody is qualified to buy music for me, unless they know of something specific I want. Nobody can buy computer parts for me, either. On the other hand, you can seek expert advice. But be wary of particular tastes, because you have to get it just right, and that's really hard to do unless you know that field almost as well as the intended recipient. Don't risk it unless you know you can nail it exactly. Go-Bots aren't half as cool as Transformers. And don't even get me started on Matchbox vs. Hot Wheels.

Never give cash. A good gift isn't about a transfer of assets. Your gift is the product of your buying power and your consideration, with the latter weighing much more heavily. A subset of this is that you should never give gift certificates/cards. Gift certificates/cards have all the disadvantages of cash without the primary advantage. They are completely non-portable. Not all retailers carry the same brands and products (Lowe's and Home Depot are apparently very competitive on this), nor do they have the same prices. If you're set on a gift card (ignoring my excellent advice), just give cash. Don't shackle your recipient to your retailer of choice. An exception is a service, such as a massage. Those aren't as good, but they are morally acceptable.

Now, no doubt you are thinking this makes it very difficult. And it does. Buying a good gift is hard work. One thing that I've started doing, almost accidentally, is to stop restricting my thinking to traditional gift-giving times. The completely wrong way to buy someone a Christmas gift is to show up at the mall on December 20th and start looking. You need to be listening all year long. It's surprisingly easy to pick up gift ideas if you just pay attention. People say what they want all the time. Sometimes it's explicit. "I want a bandsaw." Other times, it's implicit: "Instant coffee tastes terrible." Either way, though, it's an opportunity. You should never have to ask someone explicitly what they want. I think that's horribly tacky. Sometimes, that's your only recourse, though. Often, you don't spend enough time to pick up the subconscious hints. And, of course, they could be a Difficult Person To Shop For.

There's not much you can do about a Difficult Person To Shop For. In situations like that, the onus falls on the recipient. You have to make it possible for potential gift-givers to do a good job. That may mean being a little more obvious in dropping hints (throughout the year, of course; we wouldn't want to be too obvious by just doing it around Christmas or birthdays). It may also mean forgoing purchases that you want to make so that someone else has the opportunity to buy them for you. Don't be the guy who has everything. A gift is a two-way transaction; you receive an item and the giver gets satisfaction out of getting just the right thing. Don't make it hard on your giver.

Another duty as a recipient is to make surprise inviolate. Don't ever do anything that may directly or indirectly let you know what you're getting. Otherwise you're ruining it for the giver, who just wants to see that look of happy surprise when you tear off the wrapping paper. Don't go looking around the house for receipts or hiding places. Don't ask. Don't shake boxes. Don't do anything that will give you information. Because you're ruining it for your giver.

Finally, an important thing to know is to determine if you are a Difficult Person To Shop For. Have people said that? Or hinted that? Do you get lots of sweaters? Socks? Gift certificates? Interrogated on what you want? Do people consistently buy the wrong thing? Then you're going to have to work. Remember, giving a crappy gift is frustrating and unsatisfying. They get almost as much out of giving a good gift as you do out of receiving it. Don't make it hard for them. If your standards are high, well, stop being such a jerk! Or let them know why your standards are high and what meets them. Don't buy everything you want for yourself. Keep "holes" in the key $20-$100 range. Many times, you could go out and buy those things any time you wanted. Don't.

Buying a good gift is work. And it should be work. When they say, "it's the thought that counts," what they really mean is, it's the effort that counts. Your recipient should feel like you put something of yourself into it. You didn't just walk into the mall and come out with something that looked neat. You are not conducting a business transaction here. It's not about the monetary value, it's about the personal value. So make it personally valuable.

¶ 643 Posted at 11.57 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

It's the shortest day of the year, and it hit 72 degrees F. Not bad. Not bad at all.

¶ 644 Posted at 10.14 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Parkinson's Law states, "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion." While reading through Eric Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming (specifically here, under "Rule of Modularity"), I came upon an interesting point that is worth distilling into its own, derivative law: "Software expands to use all the power available for its construction" (clearly that verbiage needs tuning). It seems that every few years, there is a New Big Thing in software that will eliminate all the complexity and result in a Brave New World without programmers and other complications. In the aforementioned text, Raymond astutely points out that every such thing has only served to allow projects of greater complexity to come about. There are many real-world examples of that. Indeed, that is clearly the rule rather than the exception. So maybe my pessimistic feelings about the future of my profession are overstated, and there is a long future ahead of me. I don't know that I want to be a programmer for the rest of my life, but maybe I will be able to leave by choice, rather than necessity.

I just noticed I didn't have a "programming" category. I found that odd, given how much of my time is spent programming (and thinking about programming).

¶ 645 Posted at 05.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | programming )

I'm not one for travelling. It's mainly out of having my own comfort zone and being cheap. Depending on my mood, those have different weights, but cheapness matters most. I still like to see different places, though, and I've come up with a partial solution to the problem. Rather than travel to different places on vacation or wait to become fabulously wealthy, what I need to do is wrangle some way to live in different, interesting places. Obviously that's a partial solution because of the big issue of employment. I still indulge the fancy. I can't just live anywhere, though. I have a list of requirements:

• Relatively First World
• Speaks English, French, or Spanish (in order of preference). I don't know Spanish, but I figure I can learn it easily.
• Gotta be warm.
• Relatively populous. I'll go as low as cities half the size of Austin.

Of course, that's a partial list. Cities that have fit the bill so far are Marseilles, Barcelona, Melbourne, and a couple more. The one that's taken my fancy lately is Buenos Aires, in Argentina. It meets all of the above conditions. It's pretty Western, so it won't be too much of a culture shock. Lots of people speak English. It just seems cool. And, of course, the toilets flush the other way.

¶ 691 Posted at 05.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

While I was writing the code for the new weblog engine*, I read some of my early posts. I had to, just to make sure everything was getting imported and converted properly. Phew. That was sad, I tell you. I'm no Hemingway today, but I definitely feel like I'm a lot better at this than I was 3 years ago. I guess it's like they say; all it takes is practice.

gotta come up with a name. It's called PK now. That doesn't stand for anything.

¶ 695 Posted at 02.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

26

¶ 718 Posted at 07.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Between arranging wedding stuff, some good new books from the library, and having picked up Civilization 3 again, there just isn't any time for my poor poor weblog.

¶ 719 Posted at 06.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I got an exercise ball to use as an office chair this weekend. I want to strengthen my stomach and back. The advantage with this is that I don't have to consciously do anything. I just sit and maintain my balance. It's a low-intensity kind of exercise that is more suited for what I want (and the effort I'm willing to put in) than doing crunches or sit-ups. While it would be nice to have Brad Pitt abs*, I don't want uselessly strong "trunk" muscles; I want to strengthen those muscles for low-intensity, long exertion like standing in line or doing yard work. Crunches and sit-ups might make my muscles stronger, but they'd crap out after 5 minutes. Anyway. It's working, I think. I haven't sat in it for very long, since I just got it yesterday, but my stomach feels slightly tight. It helps that I'm a fidgety sort, so I can bounce, which enhances the effect. I'd recommend it, I think, though I'll have to see how I feel in a week. I'd get one for work as well, but my area isn't very private, so that will just have to wait.

¶ 721 Posted at 12.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I got a wisdom tooth yanked this morning. That was some kind of weird. I was all tense before (and during). I'm definitely a high-maintenance patient. No solid food for me till tomorrow at least. The nitrous was neat, though.

¶ 855 Posted at 01.44 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

For treatment of pain during and after my wisdom tooth surgery, I was administered or prescribed a topical anesthetic (smelled/tasted like lidocaine or similar), nitrous oxide, novocaine, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and hydrocodone. And that was for just one, relatively easy tooth. They really don't want you hurting. Not gonna hear me complain.

¶ 857 Posted at 01.31 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Every weekday morning, we (me and the Mrs.) play the Jumble. On Mondays, we do the Jumble for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday all at once. Today my times were (in order), 8, 7, and 6 seconds. That is all.

¶ 882 Posted at 10.00 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Much to my surprise, I have become a "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade" sort of person. For me, the "make lemonade" philosophy hasn't come from a change in my personality to sunny optimism, but rather as a result of a ruthless pragmatism. It's more of "given that the situation sucks, how can I make it suck less?" For example, I woke up intermittently last night, finally waking up permanently at about 5:30 with a minor allergic attack 1 . As I sat in front of my computer staring at my infinitely long queue of reading material, it occurred to me that while I was awake and miserable, I might as well be awake and miserable and exercising. So I hopped in the car, went to the Y, and did my regular swim, except instead of being 7:45pm, it was 6:30am. Better that I be tired all day with my swimming behind me rather than ahead of me, and better that I do it in the morning than sacrifice my precious, precious evening sitting-on-my-ass-on-the-couch time.

The key to my shift in perspective was realizing that the value of time varies over, um, time. Sleep and weekday evening time are precious. Insomnia time, not so much. I've gotten really good at taking time that would have gone to waste and converting it to useful time. With the "life changes" of the last year and a half, my schedule is less flexible and independent than it used to be. I may, from time to time, be patiently waiting for my better half to complete critical preparations for departure. That's wasted time, and it used to frustrate me to no end. Since I own a house, though, I have innumerable small tasks that need doing, whether it be vacuuming up the dirt and debris tracked in by the dogs or paying the gas bill. I'm working on keeping a list of outstanding tasks like that in my head so I can use that time. I'm starting to think of ways to intentionally put off some small tasks so I can do them in times like that rather than time that is more valuable.

I figure that there are at least four benefits from this. I get work done sooner. I get more work done. I increase the amount and quality 2 of my leisure time. And finally, I just feel better because I don't have the same impatience. I am grotesquely aware of my own mortality and the limited amount of time we have 3 , so being able to do more in less time relieves some of my anxiety. Given that the demands on my time are only going to increase in the future, learning to maximize my time is essential.

¶ 912 Posted at 12.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

After we went to the Thai restaurant in San Antonio, I was thinking that Thai food has basically replaced Chinese food in my eating habits. Part of it is that Chinese food isn't very vegetarian, but also that Thai food is just plain better. I think part of the trick is Thai Basil. Amazon has a bunch of Thai and Asian cookbooks that I want to get, but I'm too lazy to cook most of the time. Maybe I'll find my motivation again.

¶ 932 Posted at 11.13 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | food )

In case you were wondering, any posts that I make in the night like this are allergy-induced (in that I should not be awake). It's really annoying.

¶ 951 Posted at 04.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I ran over a squirrel today. It ran right under my car as I was driving by. I heard a thump and saw it twitching on the road in my rearview mirror. I felt really bad.

¶ 956 Posted at 09.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Help me choose a watch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

¶ 957 Posted at 05.39 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I was discussing hiring plans with my manager on Monday. I joked, "maybe we should review the employees we have before we hire new ones," referring to my more-than-two-months-delayed review. He didn't get the reference, though, and thought I was totally ripping on my co-workers. Luckily, he magically got it yesterday, but it kind of startled me that I could have been misinterpreted like that.

¶ 972 Posted at 07.43 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | (un)employment )

Just gotta dig a lot of code out of the mine over the next few weeks.

¶ 990 Posted at 10.20 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Dreaming about programming is bad enough, but dreaming in code is just bizarre. It doesn't even really make sense. And yet, here I am.

¶ 994 Posted at 07.03 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I have formulated three career plans for the next 20 years or so. Obviously, things happen, but you can only do so much in planning for the expected. This is by no means a complete list, but it's a start. In order of preference:

1. Spend 5-10 years building up money and experience, then get an MS in Operations Research and go to work for some big multinational like GE as a sort of Mr. Wolf for complex systems.
2. Spend 5-10 years building up money, experience, and contacts, then (co-)found a software business. This would be an intentionally small business, say 5-10 people, rather than the standard Austin startup. We would make either a simple product with a broad market or a complex product with a narrow market. There are ways it can be bigger, but the goal should be to have a business that can work profitably on that scale; success should be achievable having to grow bigger. I definitely don't want to deal with venture capital either, which is part of what constrains both the scale and the timeline.
3. Continue along a logical extension of my current career path: developer, senior developer, architect...

I believe you should have some idea of where you want to go. You don't have to go there, but it's helpful to have a big picture in mind. Note that I did just say the next 20 years or so. A fraction of that is hoping to strike oil and being able to retire young, but, more realistically, I recognize the foolishness of making predictions of my future self in 2025. That's a long time.

¶ 1014 Posted at 08.56 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I caught some bug that's going around. Might be the flu. The last 3 years, I've gotten a flu vaccine shot, but this past fall, I couldn't get one because of the shortage. It's no fun.

¶ 1021 Posted at 09.27 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

When I get sick with a cold or the flu, my inclination is to help my body fight off the infection by baking it out. Your body induces a fever because viruses and bacteria are sensitive to temperature. I figure that taking acetaminophen to reduce the fever will only make me sick for longer. So I take hot showers, hot baths, sleep with socks on, etc. Drinking hot tea is a double whammy because it soothes my throat and increases my body temperature as well. All this makes me uncomfortably hot, but that's the idea. I haven't done any double-blind studies to verify effectiveness, but it sounds good.

¶ 1022 Posted at 11.24 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

For a long time, I thought I was incapable of networking. I had long stretches of un(der)employment, and few of the people I knew could do much to help me. Recently, I've realized that I am not completely incapable. A conversation with a co-worker a few months back first suggested I was wrong. Looking back at my career so far, it was only at Motive where I had enough co-workers to actually get to know people. Audiogalaxy had a few people, but they were either college students or had were unlikely to go to other companies. I was only at Fly for a month, so I didn't get a chance to know anyone there. Then at UT I had no direct co-workers, and the people I did know were not software people. So the only chance I had at forming this sort of professional relationship was at Motive, which was over 3 years ago and was a time when I knew the least.

Secondly, the job market, especially for software developers, was very depressed from 2001 to early 2004. When I most needed a job was when they were hardest to get. Furthermore, a lot of it was when I didn't have a whole lot on my resume. That just made it harder. In some ways, I feel pretty good about that. If I managed to stay afloat then, it will only be easier in the future as my skills improve.

The final data point is an easy one. I got the lead into Works through a former Motive co-worker. He could only grease the wheels, but that's all I or anyone else should need from a professional network. I don't leave a lot of colleagues behind at ROME, but they're good ones. Additionally, I don't plan on looking for a job for years to come either. Maybe, just maybe, I'm not so bad at this stuff.

¶ 1032 Posted at 10.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | (un)employment )

I got the only thing I wanted for my birthday this year. Jessica's going to have a hard time topping this next year.

¶ 1063 Posted at 11.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I'm back at work today, so the flow of pictures will slow. I've set myself the goal of at least one picture per day, though; even if they are repetitive, who can resist another picture of such a cutie?

¶ 1069 Posted at 06.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Life. Is. Good.

¶ 1120 Posted at 02.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Every now and then, I have nothing to say.

¶ 1143 Posted at 09.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Uma's been sleeping through the night lately, while I've been waking up and staring at the ceiling.

¶ 1162 Posted at 10.11 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | funny )

I finished my first 5-star Sudoku today. Granted, it was yesterday's, but still... 5-star games are the hardest ones that the local paper will run. I have to play that because Jessica got tired of me ruining her crossword, and she needs something to stimulate her mind during the day. The Jumble we do online, of course. I think I've figured out the trick, or at least some of them. I'm thinking that one of my first Lisp programs will be writing a Sudoku solver.

¶ 1174 Posted at 11.30 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

It may surprise you to know that I'm not a very good programmer 1 I can't keep track of many things at a time. I have trouble multi-tasking. I don't have a very good memory, neither short-term nor long. I am lazy. I have little tolerance for repetitive tasks. Certain simple things can occasionally baffle me. My understanding of the intricacies of some computing concepts is not what it could be. In other words, I'm never going to be the guy who figures out how to prune 6 cycles from malloc on Athlon64s by using a vector add instead of a scalar multiply.

It turns out that these handicaps are not so crippling after all. They've made me into a maniac for simplicity, clarity, and elegance. I make my methods and functions simple and contained, so that they do exactly one thing. That makes it easier to keep track of the moving parts and easier to pick up where I left off. I give all of the entities verbose, descriptive names, because I'm not going to remember what they're for otherwise 2 . I try to stick to the "don't repeat yourself" principle because that means I don't have to deal with tedium. Those things are all valuable no matter how good a programmer you are, but many programmers are never forced to learn them because they never work on projects that exceed their natural abilities. Since my natural abilities are meager, most meaningful projects challenge my abilities. To make a (possibly poor) analogy, no matter how tall you are, at some point you'll be in over your head. Then it's a good time to know how to swim. Once you know how to swim, you may realize that swimming is useful even when your head is above water.

It can be even worse, though. The earlier you are forced to learn something, the better you internalize it. The longer you go without getting prodded into learning it, the harder it will be for you to learn it. Indeed, the harder it will be for you to realize that there even is something there to be learned. Many programmers never learn these things because there are a lot of ways to badly write a program that still technically works 3 .

To take the tall metaphor in a different direction... Suppose you're a 7' high school senior. You dominate the basketball court. Once you're in college, though, things are different. You can't really shoot. Your ball-handling skills aren't all that. Your physical fitness is sub-par. Compare that to the 6' point guard you overpowered in high school; he's had to lean all of those things to compete with you. The kicker is, he's going to get better and better, but you're as tall as you're going to get. Not only that, since you've gone so long without developing those skills, you don't even know where to start to learn them.

As it so happens, a lot of applications programming isn't fundamentally hard stuff when you get down to the nuts and bolts. Theoretical computer science and half a century of experience have done a pretty good job of figuring out what can is possible and practical. Most of us just aren't trying to go to the moon anymore 4 . As a result, it's not too hard to figure out some way to solve a problem. That issue has receded in importance. Even performance isn't the be-all end-all that it used to be in many cases 5 . What matters far more is choosing the appropriate solution, and implementing it simply, elegantly, and clearly 6 . What's aesthetically pleasing often has more tangible benefits.

As a result, I've gained a substantial amount of confidence in my ability to develop software. Being a really good programming in the small has diminishing value over time as compilers get smarter, institutional and industry knowledge matures, and computational resources continue to grow. I've developed a good nose for bad code. I might not be great at finding and fixing bugs, but having a good feel for the design aspects makes it less likely that I will create bugs in the first place. My code may have lots of little bugs, but its bones will be strong.

¶ 1176 Posted at 03.05 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | software )

Ok, this time the stupid is me. I was holding Uma overhead sitting in the office, occasionally swooping down on Jessica in her own chair. At some point, I swooped a little too far and the chair tipped over. Down came Humpty. I banged my head on the desk, my leg on something, and landed with all my weight on my hip on the arm rest of the chair. Ouch. But! What saves this from being (merely) an embarassing tale of my own clumsiness is that I held Uma aloft the whole time. She never came near to getting hurt. I could have used my arms to arrest my fall, but they were holding my baby girl.

¶ 1178 Posted at 08.36 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | me )

Ugh. Something slammed into me last night and I now have this unpleasant sore throat and general cold-like sickness. Normally, I'd just suck it up and wait it out, but I'm freaked out now that I'll pass it on to Uma. That would be very bad. I need to go find me a bubble.

¶ 1183 Posted at 08.33 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I don't do New Year's resolutions. I don't believe in them 1 . Consider that people generally come up with these resolutions well before the New Year, but delay implementing them until that time. Why is that? Surely, if the resolution is a beneficial change in their lives, they would benefit most from implementing it as soon as they decided to do it. Then there's all the baggage that comes with calling it a New Year's resolution. That's just asking to fail, because nobody keeps their resolutions. In those apparent contradictions are the answer. People make New Year's resolutions for things they think they should do but don't actually want to do. Waiting till the New Year delays doing something they don't want and allows them to join a crowd of people all failing at once, reducing their guilt. It's win-win; they get the satisfaction of trying to do something positive without actually having to do it or feel bad about not doing it.

All of that is a long-winded, roundabout way of saying I have resolved to do a new thing, but this resolution is not of the New Year's kind. The main thing I took away from Paul Graham's latest essay was the idea that one should constantly be producing something. I've spent a lot of time thinking about various ideas, but little time in either following through on them or laying the groundwork for doing so at another time. I find it very easy to let a day go by without having accomplished anything productive (code-wise), and it's similarly easy to let a single wasted day become a wasted week. I won't have that luxury if I'm on my own; days and weeks like that could be fatal to an attempt to go independent. As a result, I've resolved that I must write some useful code every day. Always Be Creating 2 . It could be for my day job. It could be for some noodling around on my own. What doesn't matter so much as long as it happens.

There are several clear advantages to doing this:

1. Self discipline and good work habits.
2. Being a doer, not a dreamer. I've spent a lot of time thinking about things I could do and very little time actually following through.
3. Experience and knowledge beyond what I might get through my job. This is especially important because the languages and technologies that will be most useful for me aren't ones I use at work. For example, if I want to create a client-side application, C# looks to be the best language to use. For building many kinds of web applications, the Java that I know is useful, but I suspect a more dynamic language such as Python will be better suited for the scale of what I'm more likely to attempt.
4. Building a library of useful parts from which I could build other things. When the time comes to go off to try whatever fool idea I seize upon, I cannot allow myself to start from scratch. I need to have all my building blocks and tools ready. Otherwise, I just won't have enough time or energy. 90% of most software projects is plumbing, and most of that is the same with similar projects.

¶ 1205 Posted at 12.27 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | longshot | software )

It is dizzying to reflect on the fact that I have only been continuously employed for just over 3 years.

¶ 1207 Posted at 02.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | (un)employment )

Almost nothing 1 freaks me out like the possibility that Uma might be unhappy on the other side of the house without us knowing. I don't think it's ever happened before, but I can't know that. We have a mother-in-law plan. We can't hear what's going on in Uma's room without a baby monitor 2 . Problem: I am a light sleeper. Uma's sleeping noises will wake me up unless the baby monitor volume is exactly right. We have a monitor with a volume dial with no stops. The zone between silence and "I can hear her spleen" is very small. Yes, I bought the absolute cheapest baby monitor. It doesn't matter. Nobody sells baby monitors advertising precise and repeatable volume control. They're all into video and flashing lights.

So, every night I have to guess. I have to distinguish between two shades of white noise to know whether it's just far enough or too far. If I'm lucky, she'll murmur before I fall asleep, so I'll know I can hear her. Often, she doesn't. So I worry. That's not to say that we rush in everytime she peeps. Most of her noises are just sighs or babbles or coos. Even when she yells or cries, she's often still half asleep. Intervening then will wake her fully, which will make her really mad. So we listen and wait. She may fall asleep. Or she may need us. Either way, we have to hear her so we know.

Pediatricians will tell you that there's no permanent harm caused by letting your baby cry. I cannot believe that. Your child will remember you weren't there for her, if not consciously. You will remember you weren't there for her. We engage in many adult behaviors that are completely lost on her. It's not a waste of time. We are training ourselves as parents to make sure we have the right habits for when she does notice. Respect. Politeness. Responsiveness. Otherwise, how will we unlearn the bad habits once it starts to matter? In fact, it will almost certainly start to matter before we realize it matters, at which point we'll have lost something we might not be able to get back.

It is very easy to tune out someone else's anguish once you let yourself believe it's ok. The slope is a slippery one. I don't want to set a foot on it. She's my baby girl. Her distress might not be caused by anything that is real to us, but it is real to her. I need her to have absolute faith that I will be there for her. I need her to believe that more than anything else. Once she stops believing that, it is hard, even impossible, to go back. I can't lose that, even if people say 9 months is too young to know that. The risk is too high. She's my baby girl.

¶ 1209 Posted at 06.16 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

This may sound strange, but I really like the way overcast skies in big cities glow at night.

¶ 1219 Posted at 10.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

For what it's worth, I was using "dead to me" way before "The Colbert Report" was on the air. And "The Daily Show" used "Army of Fun" last week, which I came up with a long time ago. Those shows keep taking my jokes. I don't have many left.

¶ 1237 Posted at 03.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

The NY Times talks about young people leaving Vermont because it's boring. You know, like me. Leaving, I mean, not boring.

¶ 1242 Posted at 12.42 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | articles )

Summary of a conversation:

Her: Are you from India?
Me: I'm from Vermont. My parents are from India.
Her: That's what I meant.

I get this all the time. The more common form is:

Other: Where are you from?
Me: I'm from Vermont.
Other: No, where are you really from?

More polite people may ask, "What is your ancestry?" but it's the same thing in nicer form. It drives me nuts. Jessica put her finger on why it's insulting (or even offensive ;-). It says that I can't be a real American. When people ask Jessica where she's from, her answer of "Connecticut" is perfectly satisfactory. She's white. She looks like a "real American." She doesn't have to tell them German, Irish, and Welsh. It's not enough for me to have been born and spent much of my life in Vermont. I don't look like a real American.

It's not even that these are people I know, or that I've been talking to them for a while. It's usually the third question of the conversation. "Hi." "How are you?" "What's your name?" "Where are you from?" Asked of anyone who "looks American," it's just an idle bit of uninteresting trivia where their ancestors come, so idle and uninteresting that it is rarely asked. Not with me. It is so important to people that they establish what I "really am" that it's one of the first facts about me they seek. Other people are just people, but I am an Indian people. Well, screw that. I am what I am. My background is irrelevant. You can find plenty of reasons to dislike me, you'll just have to work a little harder.

¶ 1252 Posted at 11.51 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | stupid people )

A dark floater appeared in my eye this weekend. It seems to be constrained to the center of my field of view. It's hard to ignore like the translucent ones I normally have. On the plus side, just one floater like this doesn't indicate anything wrong (like a detached retina), according to my research. Still, it's very, very, very distracting.

¶ 1282 Posted at 11.45 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Driving along, this other driver cut me off. The first thing that popped into my head was, "Ref, yellow card!" Maybe I should have thrown myself to the ground, clutching my knee and grimacing in agony.

¶ 1296 Posted at 12.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | sports )

I wonder how common it is for a parent to realize there is no soap in the shower and to use baby wash instead. Not that I know anyone who has done that.

¶ 1306 Posted at 11.41 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

My high school is reprazented on Wikipedia.

¶ 1315 Posted at 04.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( whoa | me )

Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Title: The Namesake

After I read an excellent book, rushing into another one seems like a betrayal. I find myself now at a time I normally read, yet unwilling to pick up even a newspaper, reluctant to diminish the novel I have just finished. The Namesake is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Part of its appeal is personal, as it concerns an Indian immigrant family in the United States, primarily the son, Gogol. Mostly, though, it's just a well-written, nuanced, and affecting story.

The story of Gogol and his family is so achingly familiar at times as to almost seem like reading a biography of myself. For example, as a student, I often had to deal with substitute teachers struggling with my name on the roster, to the point that I could tell by the significant pause and look of consternation when they got to me on the list, announcing my presence prematurely rather than subject them and (more importantly) me to the awkward agony of attempting my name. I'ts not all so specific, of course. Gogol and I have a complex relationship with the land of our parents' birth. We are neither fully American nor fully Indian, so India and all things Indian seem at once familiar and alien.

Such a result is obvious with second-generation Indian-Americans, but a similar phenomenon is found in the first generation as well. They grow accustomed to the more sedate, sane way of American life. For them, India will forever live in the 1960s, as occasional visits cannot disturb the weight of memory. Their friends and family age and die, their old haunts grow unfamiliar and change in strange ways, and they realize that what they thought for so long as their home is no longer. However, their new home can never fully replace it, either, as their formative years were spent in a different place, so its ways will never seem fully natural.

Naturally, with parents and children staring at each other from opposite sides of a cultural chasm, the generation gap only magnifies the potential conflict. The parents' natural tendency is to try to raise their kids as they have been raised. There is the obvious cultural clash, but there are deeper, fundamental incompatibilities between how people lead their lives that make the old ways unsuitable. What works living with an extended family, in the same neighborhood as your birth, where nobody drives, and where few people move more than a hundred miles from home is hardly suited to most of the United States. These conflicts are common to many immigrant families, and underlay much of the progression of the story.

Not all the themes are about Indian-ness, however. Some are more universal, or at least more American. There is the slow murder of the soul in the lonely suburbs. There is the emptiness of loss that can never be filled. We see the slow corrosion in a relationship from tiny differences leading to sudden breaks, and the insensibility of attraction. The story is inextricably meshed with the experience of Indian-Americans, but is accessible to all.

I am pleased that I found such an engaging book so soon after resolving to read more literary books. I highly recommend it. I suggest reading it soon, as the Namesake will be in theaters this September, and you don't want to be one of those people who reads a book after a movie about it comes out, right?

¶ 1337 Posted at 01.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books | india | me )

An austin man was recovering at home today after suffering a vicious branching attack earlier in the day. The man claimed to have been "just standing there, minding my own business" when assaulted. He described the assailant as tall, brown-skinned, and leafy. The only other witness to the attack was a 19-month old girl, allegedly the victim's daughter, who testified "Uh oh." Austin Police stated that there had been similar attempts in the area recently, though this was the only attack known to have succeeded. Arboreal gang activity has been on the rise in recent months as police have been distracted by the epidemic of fern rage. The perpetrator remains unidentified and is still at large.

Ahem. Long story short, I was dumb and tried to pull down a loose tree branch by dangling from it. It worked, but the branch clocked me in the head. Stupid gravity, always trying to get at me. I got 7 staples at the ER (getting a lidocaine injection into the skull is NOT pleasant). I think I'm fine otherwise, though.

¶ 1393 Posted at 08.12 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | house )

It does not appear as though Hallmark sells a "Thank you for taking me to the ER" card. That's an unmet market need right there. They could do a joint venture with MTV's "Jackass" and sell them near college campuses.

¶ 1394 Posted at 12.54 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | deep thoughts )

Woot. I'm a potential victim of identity theft. IBM lost tape backups holding employment information, including Social Security numbers. Mind you, I haven't been an IBM employee for 8 years, and even then it was as a summer intern. *sigh*.

¶ 1494 Posted at 08.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | bummer )

0393324826 978-0393324822 A friend lent me Mary Roach's "Stiff." It tells about all the things that happen to a body after someone dies, and the things that we as a society choose to do with them. We visit a body farm at the University of Tennessee, read about how mummies were steeped in honey and the liquid used as medicine in the Middle Ages, and how a Swedish environmentalist is leading a movement to compost bodies after death. Roach ranges far and wide, producing a book chock full of interesting if less than useful information. It's only a little bit gruesome and not at all depressing. Roach attempts to infuse the topic with humor, which apparently works on some readers. I didn't find most of the intentional jokes funny; maybe I'm just... what's the word? Humorless? Rigid? Inflexible? Nevertheless, there were a number of more subtly humorous parts, none of which come to mind right now, sadly. Anyway, it's interesting and thought-provoking and worth a read.

For the record, I've decided what I want to happen when I die 1 . The first priority is taking any and all useful transplantable parts. Liver, lungs, kidneys, heart, eyes, whatever. After that, I'd like my body to be used for scientific research, with the sole exception of weapons research. Crash test passenger? Sure. Lying in the sun in the soon to be operational body farm at Texas State University? Fine. Developing a more deadly bullet? No thanks. If there's anything left of me after that, I'll like my body composted (cremation uses too much energy), with an Indian mango tree and an American Elm (Updated: or a Vermont sugar maple) planted above. Just for the record.

¶ 1531 Posted at 12.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books | me )

I recently sent a link to an article about a new TV show to Jessica with the note: "This looks like it could be interesting." Look at all the wimpiness: "Looks like." "Could be." "Interesting." Why not just say what I mean? "I want to watch this." What if it's stupid? OH NO! What if it's boring? HORRIBLE! What if the article misrepresented the show? TERRIBLE! Such weaseling. How pathetic.

Relax. I am not having an outbreak of self-loathing.

¶ 1564 Posted at 04.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I am not the only one who compulsively selects words in web pages. Nor am I the only one who thought he was the only one. One of us! One of us!

¶ 1588 Posted at 03.09 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

48 sub-cutaneous injections later, I have discovered I'm allergic to pretty much everything biological in Austin. Some of these are more recent developments.

1. American Elm
2. American house dust mite
3. Arizona Ash
4. Box Elder
5. Candida Albicans (fungus)
6. Cat
7. Cocklebur
8. Cockroach
9. Curvularia Spicifera (fungus)
10. Dog
11. Eastern Cottonwood
12. European house dust mite
13. Marsh Elder
14. Mountain Cedar
15. Pecan (tree pollen)
16. Penicillium mix (the fungus, not the anti-biotic)
17. Pine
18. Ragweed
19. Sage
20. Virginia Live Oak

Luckily, my insurance covers allergy shots.

¶ 1607 Posted at 10.54 AM ⇒ No Comments ( austin | me )

On vacation for the last 2 weeks, I haven't been reading any of my regular weblogs, comics, news sites, etc. I've barely opened a newspaper, and the latest Economist is still in my inbox. I guess I read all that stuff as a break from work, but since I'm not at work, I don't need the break. I don't miss the infoload.

¶ 1624 Posted at 06.39 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I've removed and installed 2 dishwashers, so if you want to save the installation cost, I can help you out.

¶ 1634 Posted at 08.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( fyi | house | me )

I can feel it. Note that the image is actually deceptive; "high" cedar pollen are usually in the 1,000 range. If the image had been scaled properly, the bar would be many times longer.

¶ 1645 Posted at 08.10 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | austin )

Note that according to the qualitative judgment, the current 538 is still "high." The previous measurement was apparently even worse than I thought, being at least some 35 times higher than high.

¶ 1646 Posted at 01.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( austin | me )

I often get asked by non-vegetarians whether a vegetarian diet is healthy. To me it's a silly question, but now at least I can point to someone with a more extreme physical regimen on an even more restrictive diet doing just fine. The Wall Street Journal profiles NFL tight end Tony Gonzales, the 247 lb. vegan.

¶ 1651 Posted at 07.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | food )

Although some of it can be credited to/blamed on Uma. What about you?

¶ 1676 Posted at 11.03 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | tests )

In software, there are two processes for making software support different languages. One is "internationalization," which is where you make the software look up the various phrases and words from external sources (dictionary files, etc.) rather than having them embedded in the source code. That makes the software merely capable of supporting other languages. The other is "localization," where you actually produce the files with the text for Swiss German or whatever and package a version of the software containing them. Some people decided that the words "internationalization" and "localization" were too long. Rather than abbreviate them the way normal people would, they abbreviated them as "i18n" and "l10n," meaning "'i' then 18 letters then 'n'" and "'l' then 10 letters then 'n'" respectively. I figure I can follow that model and abbreviate my name as "k3n g9r" (and put it on my license plate?), pronounced "Ken Gee-Niner." Kieran would be "k4n," and Uma would of course be "u1a."

¶ 1705 Posted at 09.27 AM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas | software | me | names )

I had my first significant reaction to my allergy shots earlier this week. About 40 minutes after the injection, I started having an asthma attack. It was unpleasant, though not life-threatening; I've never had a dangerously bad asthma attack. The allergy nurse suggested it was due to the high oak pollen levels in the air combined with the oak serum in my set of vials. I think she was on the right track, but not quite all the way there, as demonstrated by today's oak pollen count:

¶ 1735 Posted at 08.17 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | austin )