Last I wrote I mentioned the fact that perhaps I moved so far out here to get away from everyone that cared about me or that I cared about.  I was never really good at the Oregon Trail game growing up (not that I actually played it for very long either), but if my memory is write the game presented the West as a wild frontier full of opportunity or something like that.  Staying East of the Mississippi, wherever the game would start wasn’t an option at all.  I wonder why.

Would the Pre-Worn Path not be an equally interesting game to try and stay alive in?  While purchasing supplies at outposts might not be the highlight like it is on the Oregonian counterpart, I’m confident that life in New England, the South, or even the Mid West would have presented its own unique set of challenges.  Maybe the to-be settlers aren’t actually looking for adventure, gold, freedom, or anything else that the Oregon Trail offers, but instead are just really bad at living where they currently are.  For all we know they could be fed up with politics, economics, or city life because it just hasn’t worked out well for them.  Heading out on the Oregon Trail is really the most feasible escape plan from all that, which makes me wonder even more what the game would have been like if there was an option to not actually go on the trail.

Maybe it’s too much to fit two games on the same floppy disk or something like that.  I wonder if the lives of the people that made it all the way to where ever they were going (was it even Oregon?) was all that they hoped it would be.  Did they ever think about the friends, family, and others they left back before setting out?  My guess is probably not, or at least not seriously.  Given the lackluster communication channels (aka writing letters to be carried buy a guy on a horse) it seemed unlikely that someone moving out weest would ever hear from anyone again.  I guess they never have to worry about declining a party invitation.

Good night moon.

Call me old fashioned, but sometimes I just don’t trust that the GPS I’m using has me on the right route sometimes.  I mean sure, it’s never led me into a crazy storm or into pirate territory but it’s taken a pretty confusing route to get me where I am these days.  I think I need to dock somewhere and update the maps or something (assuming there are ocean maps that change) because lately I think it’s been sending me around in circles or taking extremely strange directions.  If it could hear me, I might be inclined to say “What gives GPS?”  Unfortunately, I’m left to hear it declare “recalculating” which I’ve identified is code for oops, didn’t mean to end up here… my bad, lets try again.  If I was the GPS I would try to recalculate less, putting more effort into avoiding getting lost in the first place.  The more it has to recalculate, the more I start digging around for those old paper maps that I used to use as a backup.  While they weren’t nearly as sophisticated and fancy, they generally worked fairly well (and I didn’t have to announce “recalculating” when I was lost).  When the GPS recalculates a dozen times in a row I’ve almost had the urge to throw it overboard or something but then I usually calm down an realize that would be polluting, which is bad… and it might have some good emergency use.  I’ll give it credit for trying, despite all it’s recalculations.  For now the GPS will stay in place as primary navigator, I’ll remain cautiously skeptical of any wildly sharp turns but we’ll see what happens.  What’s a little more time at sea anyways.

I also worry about cycles a lot.  I’m of the belief that life doesn’t have to be nearly as cyclic or repetitive as it seems, but changing the norm is hard and requires consistent effort.  There are lots of things I’d, in theory, like to explore changing about my life but they all seem very daunting and hard.  Wearing black jeans on Thursday was fairly straightforward change, changing a social dynamic is significantly harder.  I tend to accept that given the limited timeframe I should just give up and abort any thoughts that things can be different.  Better luck next time would be more encouraging if I knew there would ever be a next time, but I’ve cut my losses before and I can survive doing it again.  It’s too early to start my debriefing, but I will probably point toward a general lack of skill paired with an off-putting image.  I might also cite circumstantial / situational failures, but I’m of the more recent believe that those failures can primarily be attributed to the personal flaws.  A story for another day.

Good night moon.

Time for an example, to keep everyone fairly rooted around the problem.  If you’ve seen me over the past decade or so you have probably seen me in a dressy collared shirt and a decent pair of cargo pants.  The closest I get to casual is Friday when I’ll put on a polo; certainly no sweats and t-shirts (implying nothing over the t-shirt) are only allowed in extreme cases during the summer like walking to a beach.  The plan was fairly simple and straightforward when I developed it, keep in mind this was a decade or so ago.  Most people dress like they’re just casually hanging out, sometimes those outfits convey a lack of caring about a subject or the person presenting it.  In an extreme, wearing PJ bottoms to class screams, in many instances, “I am too lazy to put real pants on, so I probably don’t want to be here.”  The second, and more important scenario would play out as follows:  I coincidentally run into someone cool / famous / future boss-like figure and they think “Hey, I will say hi to this nice young fellow because he looks like he has a clue what he’s doing / he doesn’t look like an idiot.”

I think I’ve gotten some use out of use case #1.  In middle / high school I think it served me well to dress professionally.  I doubt that was the sole reason that I rate my K-12 education so highly, but I do think I got my mileage out of that one.   Use case #2 on the other hand hasn’t really panned out for me.  I don’t think, aside from a handful of interactions, that I’ve ever bumped into someone who has decided to not write me off because of my dress…. not because people don’t think that way but because I just haven’t found myself bumping into anyone at all.  I think I had some dream playing out in my head where some super cool executive sees me “working” or something like that and decides to hire me, or at least pursue that option, because I look like someone who cares a little more than the person next to me.  No luck on that front.

I can take away a few things from all that:

1. The manner in which I present myself doesn’t necessarily convey I care in general, it implies I care about a very restricted subset of topics.  Someone who cares about interacting socially with others may care just as much, or more, about their dress however they just display that differently.
2. Kind of a corollary to #1, but my clothing selection tends to imply I don’t care about a lot of topics, sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing.  My clothes probably don’t show a care for sports and I’m comfortable with that, but they’ve also been interpreted to imply I’m not interested in “having fun” which, despite popular belief, may not always be true.
3. There is no inherent value in matching a stereotype, only perceived value.

I decided I didn’t  like denim, like jeans, back when I was in like 6th grade.  I had a few bad experiences and decided they were the worst pants in the world… well, not as bad as those loud swishy pants, but the worst pants that I would be faced with on a daily basis anyways.  It wasn’t until my senior year in high school when my girlfriend and a close friend of mine decided I needed to buy a pair of jeans and try a new outfit to make Friday a bit more casual.  I am not sure if I went along just because it meant spending time with my girlfriend of if I was running low on cargo pants, but I did.  I ended up getting a pair of jeans, a blue/pink collared shirt, and a white/orange sweater thing and I wore them to school.  Being interested in the social sciences, I took notes as people remarked and generally found that people liked the jeans and were confused by the tops.  Fair enough I guess.

Recently, I acquired two new pairs of jeans.  One is not really of note, but the other one is a black pair that is sufficiently different from the previous pairs to make it notable.  It also stands out because my belt is brown, but that’s an issue to resolve another day.  I don’t really have a collared shirt that I think works great with my black jeans, and I started to hypothesize if/how things would be different if I wasn’t to strict and considered pairing just a t-shirt with said pants.  Ridiculous, I know.  I’ll start by saying that I can’t implement even a trial of this strategy because I lack an appropriate t-shirt to do so at the moment nor am I easily pleased by t-shirts with messages I don’t agree with on them.  I also have a feeling that most people stopped tucking t-shirts into their jeans back in like 5th grade and I’m not sure how I could handle the increased range of motion if a t-shirt wasn’t tucked in.  That’s not to say I couldn’t survive, I’m just not sure how physically comfortable I’d find that.

I’m lucky to be playing with clothes here, I can try them on in the comfort of my own apartment and no one has to know what they look like.  I can also very easily provide previous to other people if I really want their feedback, and talking about clothes is not out of the question.  At the end of the day, it’s just a pair of pants.

I think that is enough for now.

Good night moon.

Over the past few days I’ve had a few new experiences, most of them negative, and a few repeated experiences, most of them also negative.  I have also lost a pair of pants, also negative.  Let me dive into some of the less than pleasant tales.

Over the weekend, I performed inadequate in my relationships with others.  I was distant at times and occasionally found the status quo to be acceptable.  A fair number of people would have also agreed, or at least argued, that the status quo was acceptable but logically I should have realized this was not the case.  It was not logical of me to permit the situation to stay as is, despite any perceived convenience for me.  Thinking back, I believe I made the mistake of thinking too many steps ahead, instead of where I needed to put my foot next.  I will have to improve in this area.

Additionally, I provided insufficient gifts.  As a gift giver, I know that what I give is never going to be the best idea ever since I will always apply my own “spin” on the token or item.  What I failed to take into account this season was the comparison factor.  In any other season, my tokens would have likely been much more sufficient.  This season is different from others, and I should have remembered that I needed to respond accordingly.  I will provide an example for clarity: If you present 12 golden coins, it seems like a pretty nice deal. That is the case until another person presents 25 gold coins.  If the 25 gold coins were never presented the 12 you had would have been super, but after 25 have been passed on the table, the comparison to others makes your offering much smaller than you intended it to be.  Better luck next time I guess.

Saturday night I attended an indoor barbecue-style event.  I do not believe I have attended similar events during my tenure at RPI or during the course of the current campaign.  This event confirmed my belief that I am socially distant from others and overall an undesirable social asset.  I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but my intuition is telling me that I would be much better off if I was located within 1.5 IQR here and not so far off course in outlier territory.  As a result of this, my engagement (though I didn’t engage much) ended early.

After departing the BBQ event, I went to get ice cream.  Somehow, the battery in my car decided that it was going to die/not do it’s job.  This creates quite the predicament for me.  A dead battery is not something I can easily solve on my own, like a flat tire or dislocated shoulder.  Asking for assistance from others is tough for me, because I dislike being indebted to another person for an undefined period of time.  Luckily, Ms. Boudreau was able to telephone Mr. Emala on her mobile and he and Mr. Kouttron were able to provide the required electricity to get my car started again.  I backed my car into my spot in front of BARH and it hasn’t been able to start since.  I hope to resolve this “tomorrow”.

Backing up a few hours, I’d like to resume discussion on the social.  For a while I’ve know that I am usually classified as socially awkward, which hasn’t bothered me much.  I guess I’ve always found awkward and acceptable not to be mutually exclusive, but maybe the analysis yielding that result is wrong.  I have always recognized that my guest is socially more desirable than myself, so I kind of write it off when a group joking doesn’t permit her to leave while I attempt to exit.  All in good spirit.

I am also poor at “shooting the breeze” because this just sounds like a dumb idea.  Shooting at wind is almost always a waste of bullets, and I find conversations of the sort to go the same way.   Its not that I don’t like to talk to people, its that I have trouble generating appropriate topics for discussion.  Like most, when I have trouble generating appropriate topics for discussion I talk about the things around me.  Unlike most, I could spend a measurable quantity of time talking about someone’s choice of stance, sitting pose, dress, etc.. none of which really go over well in a “hey, how about this weather” kind of way.

I am unsure how to proceed, but will continue to explore a few options. One of those options is not proceeding at all.

I was disappointed to loose another pair of pants.  Somehow I had worn down the right knee area to a critical level.  By the time I had noticed the damage and sown up the hole, the structurally integrity of the fabric had been lost and I was unable to stop the hole’s growth.  My pant rotation will be off until I can find a suitable replacement.

Good night moon.

In my spare time while driving, I like to try and do useful things.  [I find the driving implementation of piloting a vehicle very inefficient,  and have plenty of spare brain power units to dedicate to alternative activities.]  During some recent driving efforts, I spent time thinking about how things would be different for a person such as myself, given an alternate series of events.  In order to justify as somethings besides wasting time, I followed the though experiments such that if I felt the outcome of the events were favorable in some sense, I would explore how I could adjust my current position to achive a similiar result… a process generally ending in the nhmo case.. aka no-hope-move-on.

Back to the topic, so I was driving and thinking about alternative realities that could have presented themselves to me, and found but a handful of summarizations to which I can attribute my lack of rememberance in the minds of men.  Typically, I would have assumed that each lack of output would have been the direct result of a *unique* lack of input.  Not true at all.  The same input problem continues to effect seemingly unrelated output.

As I draw this hunting season to a close, I have trouble thinking of whats been done, and done well.  I look at the core objectives and see minimal, or negative progress in some areas; a very discomforting feeling.  And I’m not usually one to enjoy comfortable things, give me an itchy wool blanket any day (assuming it is smallpox free).

I would say “I’m not sure who to blame here” but logically the only thing that can be blamed is the common factor, aka moi.

Its not that I’m not interested.  That is completely false.  I don’t think the bar is low enough for me to bother jumping.  I’ll try most things if there is the slightest glimmer of hope, which I just don’t always see where I should.

What I have noticed, is that on several levels I find myself on the same plane I was on at the start of my freshman year here at RPI.  I guess for me to make this conclusion one of two things must have happened.  1) I made some progress, and then it deteriorated or 2) I never made progress, but found an effective way to mask the situation.  Now I haven’t spent too much time analyzing which of these two circumstances is unfolding, but I do know that I am not where I felt I was 1 year ago at this time, and I do feel like I am more where I am roughly 2.5 years ago.

I also don’t believe you can actually move backwards.  I am no theoretical physicist, but I do think that experiences constantly shape and transform us and there is really no way to undo that.  Sometimes we can be shaped like we have been previously, but time itself hasn’t rewound.

I think back to my freshman year at RPI, where I was barely involved in anything and wonder how that related to what I’m currently involved in.  On paper I might appear to be someone of some slight importance in organizations on campus, but that’s only on paper… and only when its convenient.  I find myself being consulted very little for things that I care very much about.  The majority of things I directly work on have been classified in the ‘sun setting’ stage by most… aka the nobody actually cares about it until it effects them stage.  I would be 95% OK with that if I was just able to go off by my happy self and do what needed to get done, but most of the things require parts from others.  I think I have figured out how to design emails that will automatically be caught by spam filters without using and words to describe male genitalia or cheap drugs.

Socially, I think that last year I traveled to more places on campus than I have this year.  I have only been in one living facility, BARH, and in only one room in said facility (A110) which happens to also be where I reside.  In previous years I’ve enrolled in a class or two that one or more people I am acquanted with happened to be taken as well.  I cannot say the same for this semester, or last semester really, whereby the closest I come is knowing a TA in one of my classes.  I have watched 0 movies here at college this year and gone out to eat 0 times with more than 1 other person.  Wait, I think I went out to eat with 2 people once.  But for me its not the number of opportunities I take advantage of that matter, because that number I can directly control.  I care more about the quality of opportunities that are presented to me because I have much less control in that field; and my junior year has been dismal on the social, academic, and professional front.

Typically I would be ok with this.  I’ve been writing off losses on the social front for over a decade now, and the academic experience at college has never been what I’ve been hoping for, but I’ve rarely experienced such losses on the professional front.  I look forward to the summer after my Junior year, where most people typically report finding an internship doing something like what they might want to be doing for a career [some lucky people even get offered jobs], and I can’t say the outlook looks bright at all.  I’ve always said to myself, ya know what self… this summer you will do this moderately boring work because it will give you some experience which will help you get a position doing not-boring work during the summer of you junior year, because employers recognize you might have some skills by that point.  Personally, I can’t say I’ve acquired any skills in the past 2 years that I would want to be doing at a job.. but thats a topic for another day.  I look ahead and say hrm, there is a low probability this summer will be radically different that any other, and that is not encouraging if its a sign of what may lay ahead in my career path.  Dear someone with enough money to hire me:  Open up shop in western mass and look for local PHP programmers.

Unfortunately its not just the summer that has me in a tiff.  In past, I’ve managed to avoid thinking about the summer because I have been busy working on cool and exciting things like Shuttle Tracking, Concerto, or RPI TV things.  Alas, while both of those projects are cool and exciting, they are not presenting tons of work-opportunities at the moment.

Fundamentally I am, well I don’t know the word.  Disturbed fits, but not really… intrigued doesn’t express contempt… and confused implies some lack of comprehension.  Blend those, and then you might get what I’m feeling.  My training dictates the methods I follow and the conclusions I can draw and support, but long ago I had ruled out the possibility that someone different could live my life but better.  I felt that I was doing a very good job of optimizing underperforming areas and readjusting things that needed it.  I’ve recalculated many times and the scores still come out the same, indicating I am behind without the leg up.  Needless to say I need need a plan.

As a result, I’ll be terribly busy for the next 5 days with all the work I planned to do over break to get ahead.  I think I’ve completed all the work due tomorrow, but I’m not 100% sure of that… there is the MatSci lab that I have no clue on its due date.  Everyday I have at least one assignment due, which would be cool if I was ahead by a day or two.. but I’m not.  My daily schedule doesn’t look like it will permit me to get ahead either.

Right now I smell Chinese food and I am hungry for it.  Its rare I smell food and want it, and even rarer that the food is Chinese.  I don’t like most of the food specific to asian countries, but I’ll eat white rice, the chinese-food version of chicken fingers, and the beef in broccoli/vegetables combo.  Soy sauce all around.  I do not like fortune cookies.  The concept that a cookie can tell me anything about my life is just about as logical as saying that the patterns wind blows grass can predict the future.  If by future you mean the direction of a shadow from a cloud then yes, anything else.. I am slightly more skeptical.

Facebook has been frustrating me.  My account has issues where it constantly gets logged out.  I login, surf around then WHAM, “You need to login before you can do that”.  Now I just quit the site, which is exactly what their business model wants me to do I think.  I would throw blame in the server replication realm, but thats just me.  Stupid facebook login.  Please fix soon, or loose me to Orkut or something… because thats where the cool kids definately are.

I had an opportunity to view Twilight recently.  It was surprisingly good.  I thought it was going to be Juno with fangs or something like that, but it was refreshingly not bad.  I wouldn’t say I swoon at the sound of a romantic movie about a family of vampires and a female (turns out its not a female vampire like I originally thought), but having a vampire meant that things couldn’t be terribly boring.  I did not read the books or hear much of anything about the movie, except that I was going to it, so I went in with a pretty open mind.. similiar to my viewing of Rent (the movie).  I didn’t know much about both movies, and if I had know the plot before hand I probably wouldn’t have liked them very much.. but they both turned out pretty decent.  Speaking of Rent, I could definately see Twilight the musical hitting broadway in a few years.  I think I enjoyed a few things about the film.  A) It wasn’t about the popular kids.  No one was the star of the basketball team, nor the most popular kid in school.  Actually, it was about social outcasts.  B)  I cannot recall mention of Dracula, or many of the common elements that are associated with vampires that are often overused in films with vampires.  (i.e people getting attacked, people hunting vampires, bats, coffings, zombies, etc) C) The main male character didn’t talk much, and when he did, it was thought out first.  Whether this is how real life works or not, I do not like it when the whole movie is talk talk talk talk talk, blah blah blah blah blah… everyone is saying all these words because they have nothing else to hold the movie together.  Overall a good movie, would see again/see the sequel(s) when/if the come out.

Quantum of Solace on the other hand was certainly not a 007 movie.  It was more like a 003.5 movie, or James Bond Lite.  I recall 0 cool new inventions, 0 plot, and minimal action sequences.  I think the most action packed parts were James Bond on the move.  That would be James Bond in the car, James Bond flying the plane, James Bond walking on the edge of the building, and James Bond in the taxi.  If this was Grand Theft Auto or the Travel Channel the plot might have made sense.  I thought the entire movie’s “plot” was actually just a warm up to the actual movie.  Quick mission, James Bond kills the eco-terrorist, on to the Russians or some real threat.  Maybe they needed a few dollars to get them though this economic downturn..I don’t know.  I expect the next 007 movie to be decent.

Mistaken, I consumed the chocolate for the 1st of Decemeber on my Advent Calendar.  I think I’ll take a Reese Peanut Butter cup to it for me to enjoy tomorrow, when it is actually the first of Decemeber.  I’m tired, off to bed for now.

Good Night Moon.

The database won’t respond to my non-SQL query, but at least it knows I care. Or if it becomes aware of what caring is, it will know that I do care. Its been some time since I last updated on everything, and as always there is much to discuss.

I was hoping to blog in the middle of last week, but things have just been terribly busy as of late. Concerto has been deploying screens at an exponential rate. We went from 1 screen to some crazy number 6 in under 2 weeks which is rather impressive. Everyone has been doing their part to write the code and make changes to the features that were not working well or people were exploiting (asking for content to be up there for a whopping 15 seconds). I’ve been experiencing increased stress levels, directly correlating to the increasing importance of the system as a whole. I think its pretty safe to say my stress is a function of the derivative of the installation of screens. I did pull off what I consider to be a very cool API in 1 night, it does a lot of cool stuff via GET/POST variables so its easy for any internet connected device to use.

This week also marked the occurrence of GM week at RPI where the Student Government elections occur. No, I didn’t run for anything, but I did help out with the production of the Debates. Overall I think the debates could have used a lot of work. I’m not sure if this correlates to the fact we were stretched thin filming the debates while a film festival was going on or whatnot but yea. if the debates were held to the same standards hockey are, they would have been pretty intolerable. Maybe people have lower standards for these sorts of productions, or maybe people are unsure were the standards should be.

I was going to cite some statistics regarding the positions I tend to have at these sort of events, but the RPI TV website doesn’t have a lot of productions from this year in it. What I’ve found is that I very typically get the role of camera operator or production assistant. This isn’t because I wakeup and go “Yes! Another day to operate a camera or assist in the coiling of cables!” its because I’ve found the leader to non leader density at RPI very out of line. I think this may be typical of an institute of higher education, but most everyone feels qualified to be the leader (and they probably are!), but everyone also feels its their right or responsibility (I’m not sure which) to do the job. Too many cooks do spoil the soup, and if everyone is busy doing leadership things like talking about x, y, or z than the cables are not going to get run to the other side of DCC 308 now are they.

Yes, I think there needs to be a leader, and sometimes that leader should be allowed to emerge in the field. But sometimes its better to decide upon that person in advance, kind of like these very long and seemingly useless pre-production meetings that use to occur. The only reason they weren’t very helpful was because the information was never any different. It was simply a re-assertion of what everyone already knew. But that was OK, most definately OK.

Since this is part 2 of the 3 part series, you’re all going to yourself… well, what does this have to do with the RPI TV elections. Lets be honest with one another, you probably wish I hadn’t written this blog,, and that I had just ranted about “Trayless Tuesday” or whatever dumb move Commons is cooking up next. [That blog will come, rest assured] but I cannot avoid the issues, and I very rarely pick the issues that I do discuss in this blog. I voted for 10 people to be RPI TV’s officiers. I would say that I voted for the people best qualified for the job but that isn’t completely accurate. In some instances I voted for the only people running for the job. The majority of everyone has been doing a good job at whatever it is they are tasked to do in the club constitution. Others feel it is there right to assume a de-feacto leadership role because their position may supercede someone elses. I would say this is a tradition of RPI TV. The upper leadership, myself included, frequently do things that other people should be doing.. or have the right to do in the constitution. I would cite a specific example from ~370 days ago, but that was a slightly special case.

I believe in doing what needs to be done, I do not believe in doing things that do not have to be done, or that will have no effect on anything whatsoever. It may be safe to apply this logic to my interactions with people. I recall discussions about RPI TV documents where I was asked what I thought. For the first few times I was asked I did tell people what I thought. Maybe it was a simple statement of agreence, or I could have offered a thought to the contrary. I’ve found thoughts to the contrary have produced a “Well I don’t know about that, I think that things might be better off the other way because you’re not taking into account xyz.” As I see this it boils down to “No, you are wrong. I think things should be this way and by asserting my opinion again I can override yours.” You should realize that if I haven’t considered factor x, y, or z I will in that case respond, good point, I failed to think about those. This doesn’t happen very often because I have thought about factor x,y,z.. I’ve probably thought about a bunch of other factors as well. I don’t have much else to do besides think about the factors because saying what I think is rarely recieved well.

I should make sure to broaden the scope here as to ensure all the unpleasant isn’t directed at RPI TV. This is much larger social interactions course. Its not just RPI where my opinions have gotten blasted down, its a lot of other places as well. Some have taken to not asking my opinion either; I find this extra effective. You can save yourself the time it would take to ask me, allow me to respond, and then respond back with a rejection of my thoughts.

If I felt saying something would make a large difference I would. I’m optimistic, so I must at least try. But I very frequently find myself attempting to engage in a larger guiding mission. Not bouncing the ball back and forth between two walls, but using those walls to steer the ball to what I’ve identified as an appropriate end game.

For those of you who feel I’ve put you on the spot, or that I’ve some how singled you out without using your name, ssn, or any other personally identifying material I am sorry. You shouldn’t feel upset, angry, or whatever it is your feeling right now. Yes, I do want to talk about it. You could approach me in person about these matters, but I will likely stutter and/or attempt to avoid the topic. I’m a poor people person. If this is what you want then go for it. I tend to stutter more if you use larger words around me or talk fast in a loud angry tone without pausing to give me time to think, process, then respond. If you’re like me and think hey, that doesn’t sound very effective, I encourage you to try the following (in order of effectiveness): 1. Hit me up via AIM, MSN, Google Chat. If you start talking to me at 15 before an hour, I might have somewhere to go at that hour, but I’d be more than happy to schedule something another time. 2. Leave a comment on my blog. I tend to read these very quickly. While it doesn’t look like I always respond to these, I’ll follow up in a private discussion. 3. Shoot me an email. If you’re email happens to come at the same time as a bunch of other emails you are out of luck.

General tips: I respond much better when people use ?’s. A statement doesn’t always register as something I need to respond to unless its blatantly wrong, but something that ends with ? does. I am very poor on the phone, which includes txt messages. That is a dumb way to contact me unless you are on fire and next to a server. I will respond honestly to any and all questions you ask unless they make me feel uncomfortable, i which case I will tell you that. There is a low probability these questions will come up (Katie is the only one who might ever ask them). Allow me to respond. Sometimes, people type IM’s very fast and send them to me, and sometimes I can’t read as fast as the Internet can. And no, I haven’t read this blog over. I am allowed to make typos, and communicate the wrong message.

Good night moon.

A lot of the time things I say aren’t taken as well as I wish they were. I can spend a lot of time getting very excited about an idea and planning it out and all hyped up about it just to find that when I share it I am either a) the only person who cares about it because the issues is of my importance anymore or b) I am wrong and that is that. When someone else presents me with an idea I assume they are excited for it and have some reason for presenting it to me. While they are looking for my feedback, they are almost always looking for that feedback to be presented in a positive fashion. If I think their idea is dumb I won’t say “well I think that is a dumb” because thats not effective. Instead I’ll try to redirect their efforts towards something that makes a little more sense. Of course this would imply people present ideas to me, which I can’t say has been done since high school.

A lot of those stupid MySpace surveys and stuff out there raise the question “if you could talk to anyone at all, who would it be?” I think my answer would be myself, 10-15 years from now. Throwing aside any time-continuum problems, I think that conversation might be one of the most ensightful I could have. I find it very hard to ask people for advice, which tends to be very complicated when you imply my information is free policy. Telling someone you asked for advice about stuff doesn’t work out well usually… but thats ok. I’ve found that I tend to be the best source of information to help me, which is problematic when I don’t have the solution right away, or even a path to get there. Yes, in various components I’m sure I align with some population that could offer advice, but that alignment is very rare. Maybe advice is the wrong thing to seek, I might I could be best serviced my an ancient chinese proverb or something like that… hrm.

Since I can’t go a blog without saying something about Concerto.. we’ve been pushing for this deployment of the system within a week or two which is great and all, but that seems to be all people are thinking about.. at least all that I know they are thinking about… but the loop tends to not include me. I think I’m thinking ahead, but for all I know I may be thinking about some midpoint between now and then. How am I to know? Today’s meeting was pretty lame, it was myself and Battista for the first 30 minutes. Then DiTore showed up; and finally we were graced with the presence of August and Brian. Needless to say it was very ineffective. I tried my best to outline an agenda and do stuff, but I fail as per SOP.

I need to fill up my cup of water before I go to bed, which I should do soon. I have to stay up later on Friday and Saturday because Commons doesn’t open until 9:00am.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring to be exact. I will likely write some code, do some boring homework, and then sit like a log. Sometimes there are exciting things going on in my life… oh wait.

I decided that time is no longer my friend, specifically the sequencing of events. A great example is summer employment. I applied to Tighe and Bond where my dad works to do some computer stuff. In the interview they told me March was usually when they get around to making decisions, etc. Well its the last week in January and they already made a decision. Typically I would be excited that I had something lined up.. but of course I now have to accept/decline their offer in a timely fashion.. again, not a huge problem.. except for the fact I planned on applying for Google’s Summer of Code project again. I know, there isn’t a huge chance I’ll get accepted, but there is a chance.. and I think spending the summer programming would be cool. GSOC, as I’ll refer to it, won’t be open until March.. which does not work well if I have to get back to T & B this week. Yuck.

In other news.. I’m defragmenting my external hard drives.. I just cleaned up a lot of junk and I imagine storing lots of video results in lots of unwanted fragments. Ideally I’d like to turn that into NAS unit at some point, but that will require a computer to serve as the controller for it. Likely a project I’ll put off until summer, where I’ll keep putting it off because my parents will coerce me into not spending my money once again.

As if Christmas couldn’t get any worse… I have recently received word that the only X-Mas gift I might have had hope of turning into something moderately decent has just washed away. I was hoping the whole “you can take responsibility and do something with it” mentality would work out but of course that was optimistic and dumb. I am no longer have a good day.. which I was actually trying to have today.

And as if I was having a good day yesterday, I continued to my mental debate of want, and how it might feel to be wanted. While I planned on dedicated an entire blog to it, I’ll just slip my thoughts in here. I find it very depressing to look back at my life and recall times I’ve been wanted or desired for anything. The most common example that comes to mind is relationships. I was most certainly not the coolest kid in school, nor was I trying to be. I recall several Valentines days where just about everyone would get flowers from a crush or a friend, even my friends that enjoyed reading as much as I enjoy computers got flowers. I got none. I recall a discussion with a teacher, Ms. Devine, who was trying to make those of use (there were 2) who didn’t get flowers feel less bad, by saying something like “In college you’ll make up for it.” That wasn’t her exact phrasing, but it was phrased in such a manner to make me believe that in college girls would care less about being cool and more about other things that I might be good at, like computers. While I’m only partway through college, my initial reports have yielded 0 results that could even be heavily modified to be correct. And no, I don’t mean to pull this entire blog into a romanic relationship thing, because I’m in a relationship with someone at the moment and I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. Expanding out to a larger social setting, I’ve found I’m wanted for very little.. and I can expand this beyond the social setting as well.

There are very few tasks that only I can perform, and I’ve found I’m typically assigned tasks because of 2 conditions. 1) I’m there and 2) I’m capable. I’m never assigned tasks because I offer some insight someone else wouldn’t…. frequently I find that other people feel it necessary to fill in the insight for me, removing any chance of enjoyment. People complain why I don’t let go of certain ties to High School and the Tiger Times and the reason is pretty simple to me, those two entities are places where I’m asked to do tasks because no one else can, or no one else knows how. A great example is digitial signage, where I’m tasked with with writing Database interaction classes… its pretty boring stuff. I write SQL and manipulate variables that we (any by we I mean just about everyone on the coding team but me) established. No, I wouldn’t be the person who’s ideal for developing the user interface, and I don’t have the javascript skill required to create a well featured frontend.. but I feel stripped of my insight again, where others feel it necessary to do that for me.

This topic came about when I was thinking about desire, and how some people are desired by others, most likely to establish some form of a relationship. I wish they realized how lucky they are to be wanted, to know that if W doesn’t work out then X, Y, and probably Z are lined up and waiting. I have no such backup, hence I don’t let go to much. I try not to be a completely undesirable person. I maintain decent personal hygiene habits, I wash my clothes weekly, I don’t wear black eyeliner, and I try not to act completely scary. Yes, I am shy, and I’m generally not the kind of person that will speak to you unless I have some inherent reason to. I don’t these these downfalls break my social bank do they? I guess so… or.. more likely.. is that I’m missing something that is oh so terrible about me.

I recognize that females tend to be wanted more often than guys; regardless of their current status in any number of categories… and that’s not the type of wanting I have ever been seeking. I think an awesome piece of data to throw in here would be the average total carnation per female ratio, but I lack said data. I give poor advice when told about people having a crush on certain people because I don’t have any real knowledge in that field. I like one person, and I can’t say I’ve been ‘liked’ by any statistically large number of people ever.. where statistically large might be > 3. Maybe everyone had a secret crush on me and they did such a great job keeping it a secret I didn’t realize it ever… hrm… this doesn’t seem very probably now does it.

In conclusion, I would like you.. the reader… to think about who you are.. how many people have liked, wanted, or desired you at some point in your life. Then I want you to write them all a thank you card.. jk thats wierd. Then you should think about how you would be different if those people didn’t exist. Where would you be today, tomorrow.. and, more importantly, this weekend.

Part 2 of the 3 part series is coming soon.

Brian out.