Story Archive - May 2006

Without so Much Spam (05/31/2006)

Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it. - Waitress (Montey Python's Spam Sketch)

I lived a meagre childhood. Breakfast was almost always composed of dry cereal and milk. It's the staple of American chidren, but such a horrible meal. Once I started driving myself to school and had my wake-up timed down to nine-minutes, breakfast consisted of two pieces of bread in the car on the way to school.

On family vacations with my father our breakfast would consist of whatever we could find around the house. This ranged from the standard dry cereal to mornings with Pepsi and Hersey's Chocolate. In your typicaly "the grass is greener" scenario, I was always envious that my cousins where getting fresh made waffles while they were envious of our sugar explosion.

During my childhood, I was never introduced to the glory of Spam for food. I'd been hinting to my girl that she needed to make me some sort of delicious spam, bacon, sausage and spam item. This past weekend we took a lazy morning together to have a real breakfast. Spam, rice, cheese, french toast and a heart attack all rolled into one. That's cooking!

Shavin' (05/30/2006)

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. - Dennis (Montey Python's Holy Grail)

Work work work. I feel like a broken record. I swung by Carl's Junior for a little food indulgence on the way home. I rarely get any kind of satisfaction from disgusting fatty food, but I just had a craving. It's not like I went on a wild binge. I just had a Western Bacon Cheese Burger. 660 calories isn't that bad is it? It's plenty for a growing boy like me. Except that I'm all grown. I'm already working on the shrinking part.

I got around to shaving off the crazy facial hair this weekend. I originally started growing it out in January under this great idea that I could take this classic picture with my two roommates. Both of them have an identical goatee and identical hair. They could almost be brothers. My hair doesn't slick back like theirs, but I did get the goatee grown. The scratchy chin stayed on far more months than I had ever intended. Two weeks ago we finally got around to having a little photo shoot in the apartment. Unfortunately, all the pictures are on one of the roommate's cameras and he has fled to southern California for a week. So you'll have to wait until he returns to see all the glory of it. Instead I give this white trash picture I took during my shaving fun.

I went to the hospital for my quarterly bloodletting on Saturday. The hospital had misplaced my standing order as they often seem to. With my newly clean face, the nurse asked me, "Young man, do you usually get your blood taken here? Or do you usually have it done at the children's hospital?" "I'm 28." "What?" "I'm 28, I'm not young." "Sorry, but I can't just call you man." "Well you could say Jordan." "I didn't know you were called Jordan." "Well you didn't bother to find out, now did you?" "Look, I did say sorry but from behind..." You get the idea. The blood was taken, but I am always amazed that they can misplace this form that is suppose to be on record for a year a time. They clearly need computers.

All the Small Things (05/29/2006)

Late night, come home. Work sucks, I know - Blink 182

Sunday night I had finished a long day playing with the girl. We had gone geo-caching and had a great meal from a local Italian restaurant and we settling in to curl up to watch Capote. My home is like a non-stop sci-fi marathon and it's nice to escape with her to watch some other genres of film.

She had work to do and pulled out her laptop to settle in few "just a few emails." I pulled out my book and started reading. I was a few pages in when I took a moment to pause and smile. Kurt reminds us to take notice the happy moments, because they are easy to let slip by. Even though I was reading my book and she was working on her computer, the fact that she was a few feet down from me made things brighter. It's all the small things.

That's the Sound of the Men (05/27/2006)

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams

Do remember a year or two ago when I was working at the French-owned company? I would get in to the office around 9am and leave every day at 5pm. It sounds like a simple eight hour day, but don't forget to include my hour lunch break. They also gave me buckets of vacation. The French know how to work.

I just spent the last week working a tad more than that. I was working close to 12 hours per day. Thursday night was really the culmination of the misery since I worked until midnight, slept until 3am worked until 6am slept until 9am worked until 4pm. I haven't done a schedule like that since I was young and enthusiastic. I'm neither of those anymore. Of course, it never feels quite so bad while working those hours as it does when I look back on them. That's really when the, "oh my god, did I do that?" reaction comes into play.

At least, this crazy week happened leading up to a three day weekend that I will fill with doing nothing. Well, nothing work related. I've already read a few more chapters in the book sitting on my night-stand.

We had another Farscape Friday on Friday, although we didn't watch Farscape this time around. Instead we watched the old cancelled-by-Fox TV movie "White Dwarf" and last week's British episode of Dr. Who.

I've discovered that my PSP nestles very nicely in screen area of my Prius. It would be perfect for watching movies on my commute if not for a few issues. The reflection during daytime against the glass screen is too much to see what's going on. The internal speakers of the PSP don't get loud enough to cover up the noise of the road. Finally, it's highly dangerous and illegal. Though I recall in my childhood my father's giant "portable" television always setting in the front of the car. That was in the days before the liberals made it illegal.

Free Everything! (05/23/2006)

The playoffs are the playoffs. You just play who is put in front of you. - Steve Nash

I just picked up the book "Shadow of the Giant" by Orson Scott Card. I hope it will be the last book that Orson writes in his overly-stretched Ender series. He won my money by writing four books in this series that I thoroughly enjoyed. In exchange I keep paying for the new books even though I have major issues with them. This will be the last book I buy if he keeps going. We're even. I don't even have time to read anymore, but I give up a little sleep each night to get through a few pages.

With all the three work events I've had, I feel like it's the dotcom days all over again. On Friday I saw Da Vinci code for free with the girl's company. I liked the movie as much as I liked the book; I didn't like the book. The plot lacks character development and relationships intricacies and all the things that I care about when I'm falling in love with a story.

Saturday I went with my company to the Giant's game and got to watch Barry hit his tie-making home run. I've never had enough interest in sports to spend my own money to go, but I am very happy to head there when other people offer me tickets. Even last night, when my buddy Steve Nash was rocking the basketball world, I couldn't even muster the interest to watch on TV. I'm sure there is some positive team instinct that causes most people to enjoy watching sports, but I lack that and life go on.

A Little More Time (05/20/2006)

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis

I could use a few more days in the week. Couldn't you? Couldn't we all? There are so many things that just get pushed off because I don't have time.

If I had more time in the week, I'd spend more of it with the girl. She's just as busy as I am, and she would need more time too for this to work out. Trying to mash together the schedules of two people who both work at exploding start ups and who are part of the dotcom bubble 2.0 is a challenge. I need more time to spend quiet evenings with her. I need more time to watch independent flicks with her. I need more time to plot world domination with her.

If I had more time in the week, I'd write down more of stories running through my head. I have three more fiction stories floating around I'd love to put down on paper. If I could get those thoughts released from my mind then more would flood in. Beyond that I'd like to write more introspective thoughts for myself. Taking the jumble out of my head and organizing in front of me helps me to make sense of the world. I have one personal essay I've been playing with for months now titled "On a Matter of Faith." It is a walk through the trail my life has taken so far on the subject of religion. The thoughts are up on Writely, maybe seventy-five percent complete and organized, but I haven't found time to touch it in three weeks.

If I had more time in the week, I'd talk with every single friends. I do my best to keep in touch, but there are so many people I've accumulated through my short life that it's an unending struggle. I don't have time to maintain hundreds of individual relationships. Without a doubt, it's one of the things I like the best about the internets. If I can write one entry that hundreds of my friends read, and they can each do the same, we can be a little bit closer all the time. It's communication optimization applied to friendship. Weird, I know.

If I had more time in the week, I'd read all of those books I mean to. I would go through about a book a week when I had time in my hermitage, but now I'm lucky if I can read one every three months. I've been reading C.S. Lewis' philisophy books. I was working my way through a lot of classics. There's a reason the classics are timeless and when I first started my quest of reading them I was amazed amazing each one was.

If I had more time in the week, I'd catch up on all the TV I wish I could watch. I've been working my way through watching all of Babylon 5 on DVD. I'd like to watch all of The Prisoner and all of the original Battlestar Galactica and all of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and all of Farscape and all of Everwood and all of Joan of Arcadia and all of Smallville and all of so many more. I just don't have the time.

If I had more time in the week, I'd do all the other stuff too.

Where Does the Time Go? (05/17/2006)

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. - Albert Einstein

I'm utterly exhausted. I remember when time tracking became required at my first company it was the worst morale killer I ever had imposed on me. The moment you can see minute by minute where all your time is going and you have the data to make the horrible realization that well over forty hours a week are going towards your work, life is sad. Yet, I've grown addicted to tracking my time at work.

I have this AWESOME Time Tracking application I wrote I've mentioned once before. I haven't gotten around to cleaning it up and sharing it, but it's on my list of things I want to do. Last week? Sixty-three hours. This week? Well, after just two days at work I've got twenty-four hours logged. I should be done with my forty hour work week by the end of Wednesday, right? How I wish it were flex time and I could really take that needed four day weekend.

On top of the long hours I had a trip to Phoenix last week and two sick roommates. All that stuff is just making my immune system work overtime and it's taking precious energy away from my brain and other functional systems.

Something I've noticed in recent weeks is my avoidance of working on the weekend. It used to be standard for me to put in a few hours on Saturday and Sunday morning as part of my morning schedule. It must be because I know I could easily get sunk into working a full day on the weekend, and pulling up the corporate email is just opening a box that I know is too dangerous.

Cinco de Drinko (05/07/2006)

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office. - Robert Frost

When I got home on Tuesday the sun was still out. Summer has been a long time overdue. In the winter, I never leave the office while the sun is still out, and that always makes me feel I'm working longer. In the summer, I can leave the office at the same time, but with a few hours of sun left, I feel like I've stuck it to the man. I soaked up Tuesday's late afternoon rays on my patio, but when dusk settled the mosquito's came. I stayed outside for a while, exposing myself to West Nile before I finally gave up and came indoors.

Wedneday I rolled past the store to get one of those insect repelling lanterns and plopped outside on the patio with the burning viral shield blazing. It was cold. The sun was hidden. I stuck it out for a while, but if it's not warm outside there is no point. I gave up and came in. Thursday gave me the same trouble as well.

The business of life has been weighing heavy on me the last few weeks. Up at seven a.m., shower, change and to work. Leave work at seven p.m. to come home cook dinner and eat. Then it's time for our round-the-world office to start waking up and my evening meetings begin. I finish around the time I should be going to bed, but I just can't stand not having some time to relax and so I stay up an hour or two later than I should. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

Friday things finally worked out. I had planned to ditch work in the early afternoon and head home to enjoy the blazing sun, but somehow I managed to put in a full nine-hour day. I got home with the last liht blazing and made fresh salsa. As the friends arrived for our Cinco de Drinko party, we enjoyed our patio furniture.

We are nerds. That thought strikes me a lot when hanging out the my group of friends. Overall, it's great that what entertains us isn't a night of hard drinking, it's hanging out on the patio discussing the intricacies of p-brane theory; it's a party of string theory. Who know that I read all those issues of Discover so I could be fund at parties. When the sun went down we moved into to watch Brazil and then two episodes of Farscape. Did I mention we're nerds?