Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night.
- William Blake
I did what any respectible person would do this Friday night. I had a Tiger party! It was complete with BBQ, alcohol and Apples!
My favorite feature of Tiger? The excuse to reformat my computer.
I installed Java 1.5 on my Mac OSX 10.4 for hot Tiger on Tiger action!
Me: So what are we doing for our hot date?
GG: You pick. I like everything you do... so no worries there.
Let's look, shall we?
This girl does not know what she is saying...
They are in a cage but they don't move, they are only sleeping
- Shonen Knife (Cobra vs. Mongoose)
My afternoon plans got canceled, so I went just for a moment to watch the Botball competition. It was hosted at Santa Clara University and it was a good excuse to swing by. I walked the halls of the math building and ran across an old professor who noticed me and said, "Hi Jordan" without a moments pause. This guy I haven't seen in over five years and he probably remembers me with hair down to my mid-back as opposed to the tiger stripes I currently have. Good for him. Guess that's why Ed is one of my favorites.
Botball wasn't non-stop action, but it was fun to see. I don't know why I didn't have that great nerdy stuff when I was in high school. I was stuck being in the band to give me my loser status. Some of my friends look forward to being soccer moms or swim meet dads, but I look forward to watching my kids compete in robotics competitions.
My two favorite teams today both came from the same high school. I've forgotten which school, but they rocked. One team was all boys, young punks with two in sports coats and one in a leather coat. One boy had a fedora and another a beret. These are the guys that are probably beaten up around the school yard, but here they looked awesome.
The other team that was awesome was so just because they were an all girls team that looked like they should be talking on mobile phones at the mall, but instead, that they were building robots and kicking ass! No flash means blurry photos:
Finally, on my way out the door and back to my car I bought coffee off my dining plan. Five years later and I still have a few bucks left to use up. Someday that will be empty.
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
- Ingrid Bergman
I remember when it happened in high school and I would go run to update my profile on TCR and within minutes everyone would be bugging me about it. Alas, I have no secret little place to update anymore.
My friends have pointed out that I have been worthless since Wednesday. I had dinner with a group in Los Gatos and I must have gotten lost four times on the way to place I should know how to reach. "Opp... looks like I'm on the highway again..." I've been in that "mind is somewhere else" mood just being jubilant. In college I invented the two number system to describe my mood. I am currently at a 9/7 for those who remember it.
Work has been busy. Here is my employee of the month parking spot:
I'm a dangerous commuter... as I have one hand on the wheel and one hand on the harmonica...
Man may penetrate the outer reaches of the universe, he may solve the very secret of eternity itself, but for me, the ultimate human experience is to witness the flawless execution of a hit-and-run.
- Branch Rickey
I was involved in a hit and run today. It was awesome. I know what you're thinking, "Oh no! Jordan, did your pretty car get hurt?!?" No, no it didn't, because I wasn't in the car. I was on my skates on the sidewalk. Of course, I was wearing all my pads and helmet... *cough*.
I was skating down the sidewalk of Lytton, getting ready to turn on Middlefield, going about the speed of a jog, when a car came flying up from and underground parking lot.
Clearly, the car wasn't expecting someone to be on the sidewalk, and didn't think it needed to stop until it made it all the way to road. I swung down the driveway into the road, trying to avoid being hit, expecting the car to slow down. It totally didn't. The driver, for unfathomable reasons, was looking the other direction. I couldn't swing full on into the road, or I would have been hit by that traffic. I couldn't go onto the dirty grassy median without making a horrible tumble that would have surely broken a hip. The Impala made contact with me, and I gently pushed on the front with my hands and slid my ass up on the hood of the car to avoid being run down. That sure got the drivers' attention. He had this expression of, "OH MY CRAP, I've just killed someone!"
I slid off and went to the side expecting the driver to make sure that I was okay. The driver, the brilliant driver, turned onto Lytton and fled off down the street.
Sure, I instantly took down the make and model of the Chevy Impala, and license plate number of the car, time and location of the incident, and a brief description of the caucasian male in his late-thirties or early forties with grey hair. But since I'm not injured, and I'm lazy, I'm probably not going to do anything about it. At least, not for a couple weeks until I need to get some free knee surgery or something.
A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
- William Shakespeare
I had one requirement for April Fools: it can't cause anyone unneeded stress. I despise jokes that cause people stress.
I think the only coworkers that know about my site are already in on the joke, but I guess we can't expect to keep it secret for ever. In fact, I'm shocked that it isn't public knowledge already. Thursday my little group of four team mates pulled down the press picture of our CEO, ran to the photo shop, and printed about 150 copies of it. Then, "late" Thursday night, around 8pm, two of us that were still there ran around to every single cubical in the office and put in at least one photo. For the colleagues that were kind enough to have framed photos on their desk, we replaced every framed photo with one of the CEO. So if you went home thinking you had four pictures of your husband and children on Thursday night, you came in with four pictures of the CEO on Friday morning. With a wonderful silver pen, we autographed most with inspirational phrases like, "Execute, Dammit!" and "Way to go Tiger!" We even got the facilities people to help out to place pictures inside all of the executives offices.
I will admit, they did superb. I work at a fairly locked down facility, and it would have been a security violation to let us into the offices, so instead, they joined in the conspiracy to do it all themselves.
My personal favorites were the people who had the big frames that have 3-4 pictures in it, where we replaced all of the with the CEO. In the CEO's office itself, he got three lovely pictures of himself autographed with nice phrases like, "I'm you're #1 fan," "Take us to profitability" and "Make the share holders proud."