I actually think my back was hurting from spending a few hours in a crawl space moving my mom’s old boxes around, but that’s a different problem.  I commanded my back to stop hurting and so far it seems to have stopped ailing me.

What I realized, was that I wasn’t taking my own advice very well.  I remembered the advice I used to give people who were feeling depressed, homesick, or downtrodden for whatever reason:  Is someone gunning for you today?  If the answer is no, then you don’t have anything to worry about; life could be a lot worse.  If someone is in fact gunning for you, then you can complain all you want until the problem is resolved.  I ran the “how many people are gunning for you with a high probability of success” query and, as expected, I shouldn’t be complaining about anything.  Things could be a lot worse.

I guess I was then feeling nostalgic, because I then proceeded to remember lots of other units of advice I would issue or those that were issued to me by far humbler men.  Based on the fact that it isn’t raining, I have a roof over my head, food readily available, wash facilities that work, the means to complete my current mission, AND the fact that no one is gunning for me: I must be living some form of the high life.

That’s not to say my life is perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing, but on a very basic level things are going pretty well I guess.  Sure, socially I might not be on par with the course, but I also don’t have anyone in the foreground who is actively serving as my enemy.

I’ve been trying to identify the correct way to describe how my spring break has gone and its tough.  Usually I would say “mild” or “mediocre” as a way of saying “well, nothing exciting happened… but my house didn’t burn down” but I feel I should increase my descriptors to something a little less vague where people actually have the ability to respond.  If you’re wondering, I’ve used words like mild and mediocre because they’ve very effective at stopping a conversation.  If someone says they had a great break, you ask them what they did or say “that’s good”.  If someone says they had a bad break, you ask what went wrong.  When I say my break was mild, people tend to just look at me like I have 8 eyes or say “mild?” to which I respond “yea, like the salsa.”  So far, only one person has managed to extend this conversation beyond salsa and back to the subject at hand, but they are a well trained conversationalist.

But like I was saying… there isn’t much exciting news to report.  This break is playing out very similar to the last one, my dad sends me a stack of places I should apply for internships… out of which there might be 1 that uses the words “HTML” or “internet” in their field of work.  This year there are 0 that say Ruby on Rails .  Mom continues to harass me regarding my weight, believing that once again my stomach has shrunk and that is why I did not eat 2 donuts for breakfast or only a can of soup for lunch.  I have actually gained 1.5 pounds, which I will attribute to a lack of motivation when it comes to exercising sir.

Well, I should head off to bed.  Katie is out partying with some friends,  later today I might party it up with Concerto 2… that is where it is at these days.

Good night moon.

These past few days have been pretty rough for me, far from the smooth sailing days of say 3-4 weeks ago.  Sure, 3-4 weeks ago I was still trying to figure out that rest of my life bit, but at least 3-4 weeks ago I had just submitted some applications online.  Now that all the time has passed I’m started to float two ideas in my mind. 1) I’m doing something very wrong in the application process or 2) I have no future working at a company that I’ve identified/applied to thus far.  I’m hesitant to discredit #1 because then I’m left only with #2 which I really don’t want to accept at this moment in my life.  Maybe next week will be a better week to swallow that news.   I suspect that my GPA is probably to blame here, only because my resume doesn’t provide me an adequate platform to say “… all while I’ve driven the development of N web development projects and done a bunch of other useful things.”  If you are looking to hire me to design circuitry, my GPA is a pretty accurate reflection of my skill and knowledge, if your looking to hire me to develop cool pieces of software you really should look elsewhere.

Now that I’ve lost the readers who skim just the first paragraph with that pretty bland material, I’d dive into the more distressing topics.

I filmed three hockey games over the past three days.  If you know me well, you know that I am not a hockey fan at all.  Names like Malchuck and Pirri sound like Pokemon to me, not players on a team.  I filmed the games because RPI TV needed help and I was around, if the usually 40-person crew was available I would not have been there, but twas not the case since it’s spring break and all the freshmen head home.  I’m going to save my discussion of the filming of hockey for another blog…

But I’ll certainly elaborate on some of the non-hockey non-filming things that happened.

For example, during the last game we filmed I learned I’ve been painted over in someone’s memory… at least in once instance.  I guess I should have expected it considering the memory was 3 years old, but I still remember these sorts of things somewhat well.  Let me provide a little dash of hypothetical background: lets say you once had what you considered to be a friend;  as time has passed that individual has transitioned from being a friend to more like an associate or coworker like everyone else.  That person proceeds to tell a story about something you did together, but replaces you with someone a bit newer in their life.  Of course the person you have been replaced quickly affirms their role in the story because they are always willing to associate with non-negative social situation.  Hypothetically, you might be left to think if they just accidental forgot who was there or they’ve done a find and replace of any memory of you as a friend in their mind with someone else.  I guess I shouldn’t fault someone if they have chosen to globally find and replace me, its probably safer that way.  You wouldn’t want any potentially unauthorized (by association)  actions to come to light in a background query these days.

I shouldn’t lie, my memory is poor as well.  I try really hard to provide accurate accounts, but when I do have to make up the details I try my hardest to make sure that no one could possible call or notice my bluff or I let people know that I’m completely guessing here.

Sometimes I get disappointed when I overhear others planning to engage in things that I’m not authorized or able to engage in.  I’ve gotten pretty good at handling the not-authorized bits over the past few years, its mainly the not-able items that get to me the most.  That is probably because I dislike things I can’t do.  For example, freshman year I couldn’t do 10 push ups to save my life, I can now do a very acceptable amount.  The ability to do push-ups is unlikely to help me much,  but I opted to do it just because I wasn’t able to before.  I can probably break “non-able” situations (there has to be a better phrase than non-able) into two groups, self limited and externally limited.  Clearly self-limited non-able scenarios are preferable because I’m the only to blame (like the push up scenario).  The externally limited ones are much harder to navigate, like navigating the parents-treating-you-like-your-16 river.  That is one river I definitely stuck in a canoe in.  I don’t like canoes very much, they are highly inefficient modes of water transportation, but I guess you can fashion them out of a tree if you need to.  Rowboats and kayaks are far preferable for any serious water transportation efforts.

Good night moon.

A quick recap of events:  This afternoon I had to activate video playback on the Alumni House Concerto screen so they could watch the Legends of ‘85.  The computer powering the screen isn’t super powerful  so it stuttered a bit when playing it back, the frame rate might have been in the single digits.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do that wouldn’t threaten the stability of the system so I had to leave these moderately bad looking video (by my standards) playing.  After setting that up, I returned to the Union and everyone left to attend the “Big Red Freakout” hockey game (spoiler alert: RPI lost miserably).  I did not leave. Later,  I battled the vehicular hockey traffic up near the Field House to grab some dinner and supplies from my room, then I returned to the Union.

I spent most of my time struggling on a form to support a has_many join in rails for Concerto 2.  Feeling down, I went to Father’s to buy an ice cream cookie, one of the few “treats” I’ll personally indulge in.  After purchasing the cookie/ice-cream combination, I discovered it expired by opening it up and finding the cookie mostly absorbed into the ice cream.  I confirmed an expiration date of Nov 21, 2009 by examining the back of the wrapper.  The hockey game ended at some point and a modest crowd (i.e 2-3 people) trickled back to the Union.  Most people were attending post-game events and therefore did not return to their place of origin.  A little before 11:00pm I returned to my dorm.  That is where I write to you from.

It is no secret, I’m not a big fan of hockey.  I’m not opposed to the concept of hockey/athletics in general, but I feel no personal draw to attend games.  That said, you’d be mistaken to say that I won’t go to a hockey game.  I won’t go to a hockey game alone or for the hockey, but their are plenty of other reasons that would get me to attend.  For example, I have attended sporting events and musical concerts because there was a social reason for going.  Someone else may have invited me as their personal guest (opposed to inviting a dozen people to go as a group), or someone may want the opportunity to just chat or spend time with me (like my dad taking me or my brother to a basketball game).  The venue doesn’t matter much to me, but the interaction that happens when I’m their does.

In my current social situation, there is a low probability I would have interacted well with any group I could attend such events with at RPI.  I am securely positioned as an outlier, where most others view me as mildly useful for a very specific (and unfortunately shrinking) set of tasks… nothing more.  Commonly I am invited out of  professional courtesy, whereas I am not annoying enough to warrant being blacklisted from event, and it never hurts to invite someone with a terribly low attendance record who you see on a regular basis.

I am unsure how to accurately capture my feelings, because I typically use “left out” to describe scenarios where I am being intentionally excluded from something, which I am not.  I don’t identify loneliness with my current state because I know I could always initiate communication with a friend should I think it would help.  How exactly to capture the feeling of an outlier?  Maybe if I knew more big words I would have a better set to choose from here.  Spare may be a word to describe some emotions, where it is perceived that anything I could offer a gathering can already be provided by others.  In previous years I might have said secluded because I wasn’t as publicly visible as I’ve been this year, but I’ve found that an increased physical presence makes minimal difference.

Maybe it makes sense to explore the logic behind invitations and gathers.  Let go down the list quickly:  As an organizer, it it always logical to invite yourself.  Your significant other will also want to attend, or else they will feel left out, so you should invite him/her as well.  Next, I guess it makes sense to invite some close friends who you know will come.  Independently, they each should be able to interact well with each other so they aren’t relying on you to serve as the  only common ground they have.  Next, you might want to invite someone who can act as the “life of the party” for whatever event you’re hosting, should things go downhill this person could be someone well qualified to supply “event materials,” be it physical goods, services, discussion material, etc.  I think you finally invite everyone else, recognizing that an event’s enjoyment may be measured in sheer attendance and the more you invite the higher attendance might be.  Since these people are, in some regards, extras (i.e you might not invite all of them if you had limited space/resources), you don’t spend time evaluating their social needs or fit with the group… just shotgun it.

Maybe I am just really bad at picking up on sincerity or something; but I would almost always cast myself in the group of extras invited to events… be it a meeting, sporting event, party, food trip, you name it.  I guess most people must be OK with this, they go and do their own thing, interacting in whatever social circles they find themselves in.  Me?  I’m a little more structured than that.  Going with the sole intent of “showing up” to “see how things go” doesn’t work for me.  I don’t do anything to “see how it goes” except for things that I can undo with no damage (like computer programming).  Before I’m willing to take a risk and “see how it goes” I need to evaluate all the possible outcomes and, to proceed, identify some slight probability of success.

That was all very abstract, let me “break it down” for you.  To date, I have asked a total of one person to enter a relationship with me, you can probably guess who.  To do this, I spent approximately a very very long time determining there was some probability of short-term success and an acceptable low probability for little long-term damage.  This is because I opt to not be like a significant group of males and enter a relationship with just about anyone for the sake of seeing how it goes and gaining some experience.  (Though I will say, the knowledge gained from past relationships does leave something to be desired at times.)  Life is not my training dground, I don’t have the time to spend practicing these sorts of things.

Consider yourself lucky.

Goodnight moon.

I try not to blow my bugle too often, reserving its use for times when alertness and responsiveness are important.  It disappoints me to receive such a dismal response to a trumpeting.  Rarely are my requests unfounded, and never are they unjustified; my simple pleas fall far too frequently on deaf ears.  I wonder if the bugle itself is flawed,  maybe it’s important is being drowned out by the call of others, or its tune indistinguishable from the rest.  I’m hesitant to invest the time in learning a new tune, worried the time spent won’t rally any more support.

I almost made the mistake of discussing whether the game can actually change, nearly citing the game as static constant only flexible in the ways we perceive it.  I am glad I avoided entertaining such a discussion, instead I’m left to think about how the game can be effectively moved in our direction.  Traditionally, I’ve played my hand for the betterment of others, trying to reap any reward purely as side effect of those actions.  I recognize this method may not be the most effective at providing any personal gain, but my training has guided me to enjoy any slight gains on this front.  I do wonder what more I could be doing to adjust the variables to better align with the goals, or (the alternative) adjust the perceptions of key parties to better reflect the desired scenarios.   What I do know for sure is that plan A hasn’t been very successful, and the results plan B have yielded haven’t shown much promise.

To start of my 2010 blogging year on a positive note: I will let you all know that I have applied to at least one job, and have partially applied to at least one graduate school.  I have received no positive responses on the job or graduate school front, but I will hope for the best and continue planning for the worst.  I have the hardest time with my Cover Letters to places I apply; its not very easy for me to express in words why I want to work somewhere… especially when I don’t have a strong idea what kind of development projects are going on or anything like that.   I had also hoped to say that I have completed the application to at least one graduate school, and if I had posted this blog yesterday I would have said that.  However today I learned that they can’t waive the GRE anymore, the admissions office won’t let them, so I’ve got to go and take that sometime soon.

That’s enough positive stuff for now.  I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you.

Over winter break I had the opportunity to go down to Florida with my family + Katie.  My parents are considering retiring down there for some duration of the year, probably the part of the year that involves shoveling, and this trip provided them ample time to explore lots of retirement communities.  Its strange to think of my parents hanging out in a retirement community participating in strange retirement community activities.   Maybe they’ll make friends with someone who knows how to work the TV remote…  (My parents have trouble associating the mute button with the unmute action to re-enable the sound.  It runs in my mom’s side of the family I think.)

While down in Florida, we went to Disney World and did lots of fun stuff.  Besides waiting in lines, we went on a few rides, ate roughly the same thing every day, and saw our fair share of confused international visitors.  We also went to the Cirque du Soleil for Katie’s birthday (my mom determined she liked the circus, and therefore Katie would enjoy it too).  Since you’re taking the time to read this, I’ll let you in on a little secret:  I don’t like the circus.  Don’t confuse that statement with “I’m afraid of the circus” or “the circus makes me nervous,” because neither of those are true.  I don’t like the concept behind the circus, for the same reason I don’t like the concept behind most professional sports.  As I see it, most of the acts at the circus involve people with a highly specialized physical skill set showing off things they can do that you cannot.  Even if you could probably do some of the acts, like fly around on a sheet, you’ll never be able to try because you are not in the circus… and only they have the flying sheet machine.  Soccer, on the other hand, is a sport that just about everyone can try, which makes it slightly more enjoyable in my mind.  If I see #{famous soccer player} doing a cool move, I can try to do that.  If I see a circus member doing something cool I’m left to think about how I will never have the chance to try something like that.  I’m not saying the circus is a bad experience or something I hate to go see, I just don’t find it as enjoyable as… say tossing a frisbee around or playing a video game (expect for when you play those obnoxious people who punch you in the face when you spawn).

Let me think, what else is worth mentioning.  Oh yes, it was frigid when we were down there.  Not like 40’s or 50’s, but like 20’s and 30’s. All the local residents were very confused what was going on, I almost wanted to declare “welcome to weather.”  It was moderately humorous to see  all the places that didn’t have heat and therefore were closed/not doing business.  I think even some of the schools cancelled because of the lack of heating capabilities.  Maybe they can borrow some heat from the Sage or Ricketts Building here at RPI.

This weekend is Valentines Day.  It should be no secret to you that I don’t like Valentines Day.  Don’t get me wrong, the theory behind the day is great, a special day each year that isn’t an anniversary whereby you celebrate your relationship with someone.  The implementation is terrible, primarily because everyone does it on the exact same day.  To me, the 14th of February is of little significance (I associate it with Lincoln and Washington’s Birthdays), I would much rather celebrate my relationship in March, maybe April… or June.. I’m usually pretty free in those months.  As a male partner in a relationship with a female (I have not run the analysis for homosexual couples) there are certain expectations for Valentines Day.  For example, I am expected to partake in a romantic meal with my partner.  In this case, romantic may be defined by money spent, exclusivity, uniqueness, thoughtfulness, or any combination of the aforementioned.  At some point during the day, I am also to present my partner with a series of offerings (aka gifts).  For those of you who don’t know Katie, she celebrates an anniversary in November, Christmas in December, and birthday in January.  By the time February rolls around I am running out of good gifting ideas.  My mom suggested popcorn; that is definitely a good idea mom.  I actually don’t mind giving gifts, but I have trouble when I have to do it month after month after month after month.  I’d rather be like hey, that looks cool on Woot/Slickdeals/Amazon/etc, I’m going to buy it for Katie.  Sure, she may not be expecting it and therefore be unprepared to reciprocate the offer, but I don’t expect anything in return.  What I also dislike about Valentines Day is that many people have such elevated expectations for it.  Even people who aren’t Katie or I are like “what special plans do you have for Valentines Day?”   The holiday might be more successful if I was just like Surprise! Its April nth, today we’re celebrating Valentines day!  Of course that wouldn’t work because the Hallmark Store wouldn’t have any good cards.  Unless I made my own…

I haven’t finished running the numbers here but I think that in most relationships, females have it much easier buying gifts for a male partner.  I know of a few males that are picky or extremely particular, but most I’ve reviewed would be highly satisfied with a random good of negligible monetary value.  I hypothesize you could give a male a box of cleaned trash from a junk yard and he would enjoy it.  Females on the other hand, commonly prefer items they can wear (like clothing or jewelry), eat (like chocolate covered strawberries), or… actually thats it for the “general” ideas… other gifts would be more specific to the person like a video camera, microwave, popcorn, etc.

I am now working on another blog.  It might be decent.

But for now,

Goodnight moon.

Maybe I am not thrilled because I am a member of  no group. I possibly hold the title captain of the “not affiliated with a group” group which contains those of us that intermittently interact with everyone or no one; however the nature of the “people who aren’t in a group” group is that we don’t act like a group.  Us unaffiliated folks don’t organize group trips to Denny’s at 3 AM in the morning, as a majority of the membership (remember, these folks are really the not-members) may actually go to sleep at a regular hour or happen to be at the right place/time to tag alone.  I hope I can attribute the staying-up-super-late-and-then-complaining-or-bragging-to-me-about-how-you-didn’t-sleep routine to the end of the semester, it would be very nice if next semester others were well-rested and interested in doing work before 10PM.  Personally, I strive to get most of my work done between the hours of 8PM and 5PM, though I must admit I’ve been sleeping a little late this past week and my average work-start time has been around 9:30pm.

Its disappointing to me the lack of progress all these groups are making.  Everyone always “understands” that the semester is busy and such but the semester is always busy.  Instead, I will cite my lack of strong motivating presence, especially during the beginning of the semester, as the primary cause for failure.  Some have made up for this lack of work over the past week or so, but a few of our core units continue to disappoint.  I have trouble identifying where exactly the priority and time-allocations got shifted to.  I don’t see strides being made in other areas, unless those areas are secretly being explored behind my back (which, as of late, is becoming more and more likely).

I’ve toyed with the idea of building a metaphorical campfire for everyone to sit around it to sing kumbaya, but I know that most of us don’t like singing and aren’t very good at it.  Those who do like singing, tend to sing really really badly.  I’m glad they enjoy singing and all. but they’re not the ones who need to participate in this bonding experience.  Also on my mind was the idea of meeting with the segment owners to figure out exactly what is going on.  I’m skeptical I will receive any useful data, as its much easier to make something up then to make progress on tough issues.  One idea I keep returning to is this bottom-up change concept, which involves me violating several contracts and engaging the less influential segment members in a general discussion.  I suspect I can step on just about everyone’s toes by doing this, and I might even produce a situation that is more partitioned than the present.

In another area of my life, I may have mapped out an execution plan for a burden I’ve carried for over two years now.  I am fairly confident that it will work out well for me in the long run if my strategy is successfully executed, though the short-term losses will take some time to realize.  The real trick is the presentation and delivery of this strategy, I can’t just lay it on the table because no one would buy into it at that point.  Unfortunately my casual communication with all the parties involved is extremely limited, so I’ll have to go about this a more subversive way.  If all goes well, you will have no clue what I am talking about in this monologue.

Dodging back to my previous segment discussion, I should give more though to the notion that the segments may interact more than I know.  Recognizing there are likely some extreme outsiders, I’ve recently been lead to believe that people might interact more in my absence.  I won’t directly attribute that to my absence, but maybe the coincidence that I am not present during well established time.

Goodnight moon.

I could probably write a small book reviewing my feelings with the institute I currently attend, but I’m doubtful my feelings are bound to this specific establishment.  I think back to high school, and I probably could have succeeded in just about any other high school.  Sure, I wouldn’t be the same person today without my daily exposure to a television studio, but I’m confident I could have supplemented that technical knowledge set with something equivalent… like the lighting control for the sage I always wanted to learn but never was permitted to.

One thing I didn’t mind about high school was my interactions with others.  Sure, most people would classify me someone on the geeky/nerdier end of the spectrum, but that didn’t spot me from saying hi to people in the hallway, and almost as importantly, it didn’t stop people from saying hi to me too.  Maybe people felt they had to be nice or I wouldn’t help them fix ______, but I’d rather think that people are inherently nice most of the time.  I suspect that at RPI I have done a poor job of establishing the field in which I’m interested in interacting with others, and instead of trying to figure it out, most people opt to ignore me all together unless absolutely necessary.  For example, I can send dozens of emails out looking for feedback, suggestions, or just a simple “Thank you”  and can count on the same individuals to respond or acknowledge me, its not until I send “Hey, I’m about to throw out something of yours” that I get a timely and succinct response.

Freshmen year at college I spent most of my non-class time online in my room, during which point I was signed into AOL Instant Messenger.  As the semester progressed, the unique senders of messages to me declined steadily to around 4.  Since freshmen year I’ve opted to revive my MSN account, add my Facebook and MySpace chat account, and add my Google chat account bringing the total # of services I’m available online for an instant chat with to >5.  The number of people who regularly message me on these services may have grown to 5 I think.  Logically, I expect the number of people who regularly commutate with me online to have some direct correlation to the quantity of people who interact with me in real life and one would have thought that being around longer and interacting with more people might have increased that number.

I often wonder if my work-oriented approach to things serves as a detriment to me  It makes sense to me: people attend college to graduate.  Graduation requires good grades.  Good grades require some quantity of  working.   Being work-oriented facilitates work… at least thats the hypothesis I’ve been working off of since the 6th grade.  If everyone worked “better” in sweatpants and hoodies, we would probably see more people wearing them in professional settings.  I’ve digressed a bit, but I may resume work on the automatic chat bot I worked on circa 2005.  While it never carried out the most intelligent conversations with me, it knew enough to ask about the weather from time to time.

Like I said earlier, I wasn’t one of the popular kids in the school, but there were my areas of expertise that I was given near-free reign in to work as I pleased.  I miss that component these days.  The only free reign I have now is what I can squeeze in during my downtime, which is sparse to come by.  Don’t think I am opposed or disinterested in the other tasks I am doing, I could just use a clone (actually, another interested person would probably less confusing to all) to help me do them faster.  If the red tape I have to cut through was your typical paperwork or hierarchical problems I would have no problem pressing forward, but the red tape holding be back right now comes from within.

Also on my list of misconceptions was the notion that college would at least make me  desirable employee, if not a desirable “well-rounded” person.  I can safely say that my 3.5 years to date at RPI have generated minimal leads that could help me after I graduate.  I have not been taught a unique skill set, and I suspect peers from other schools may have taken classes that have taught them actually useful skills.  While my outside-of-the-classroom projects may help set me apart from others, much of their scope is limited to RPI; its not like I could write myself a recommendation or reference letter about the work I did on Concerto or something weird like that.

If my second to last undergraduate semester is any predictor of the future,  I am in store for much of the same in the spring semester.  I guess I’ll have to get work on that chat bot, maybe I’ll train it to help write some code too.

Goodnight 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.

Fundamentally, I’m not opposed to people dressing up in costumes pretending to be something else. I certainly see the merits of escaping from your present struggles, be it as a student, young adult, professional, etc.  People take vacations to get away from this stuff, so putting on a silly outfit for a day seems like a much more cost effective way of handling this need.

Me?  I’m not a huge “dress up and pretend to be something else” kind of person.  I don’t see many long term merits to disguising myself as something else for a few hours, and the short term worries far out way any potential benefit.  Choosing a costume is a challenging task; despite your desire to repeat an outfit, you really don’t want to do so in the event someone recognizes you from a previous occasion.  Reusing a Halloween costume is almost as deadly as reusing a dress at a high school formal.  Never mind the whole appropriateness of the costume…  I’ve found that most females choose a Halloween costume that maximizes exposed skin.  This makes little to no sense, it is the end of October; it is going to be cold outside!  While the girls are busy minimizing their clothing, the guys are maximizing the perceived coolness/popularity of their outfits in an attempt to attract the girl who has the minimum clothing on.  I’m not sure what is desirable about mating with someone who doesn’t understand the weather and intentionally exposes themselves to near-hypothermia conditions… alas I digress.  I’ve always been a fan of the simple ghost costume, consisting of a large white sheet draped over your body with a few strategic holes cut in it.  Not only can you make it yourself, but if you prepare it correctly you can stitch the holes back together and have a white sheet when you finish!

But like I said, I haven’t dressed up for Halloween for quite some time.  I like to cite all the reasons above as secondary reasons that are far easier to explain to people than some of the deeper issues at play.  I get stuck in the following dichotomy when evaluating the Halloween concept:

1. What am I disguising myself to escape?  While I’ve run away from my fair share of problems, I’ve never put on a ghoul mask and pretended they didn’t exist.  That’s a stupid approach when you think about it applied to the other 364 days of the year.  If there are some issues that I’d like to escape on Oct 31, maybe I should find a more feasible solution to them… one that I can pull off Nov 1 if it persists.
2. Aren’t I in a good enough disguise as it is?  There is definitely a limit when putting on extra layers accomplishes very little, and I think dawning a costume definitely exceeds that point.  Is dressing up as something else really going to do a better job of obscuring myself than the tools I employ every other day? I’m lead to believe that what I do every other day works pretty well, my current mask is pretty well glued on.

If I could identify which one of the above situations applied I might be able to identify something acceptable to dawn on Halloween but this time of year rarely presents the opportunity to engage in such a exercise.

Good night moon.

But in all seriousness, it was strange for a few reasons.

1. People who I don’t know rarely communicate with me.  I’m not very outgoing and tend not to engage in communication with everyone I see.  The reverse is also true, where people don’t feel like I’m the most approachable person.  I’ve found people are more like to speak with the people around me than to me.
2. I don’t think anyone has randomly said Hi to me after 10:oopm.  While not common, its not unheard of for someone to enter the Web Tech Group office during class hours (Sun-Thur, 2pm-7pm) and say “Hi, can I borrow a stapler.”  When people do that I always wonder, are they talking specifically to me (when I’m alone in the office, as I often am) or if they are just proclaiming their desire for a stapler out-loud in hopes that I’ll respond.  Usually I do lend them the stapler.

On a side note, I enjoy using an <ol> any chance I can get.  That is probably one of my favorite html tags.

I think I can count the different parties I interact with on a weekly basis on 1 hand. so there are less than 5 of them.  Usually, I can rely on one of them to be in positive territory, and the rest to be in negative or neutral territory.  In recent weeks, it seems everything has fallen into a recession, no positive parties around.  This is making my life slightly less pleasant than normal since its harder to find an outlet where I won’t be scolded.  Traditionally, I think I’ve used some sort of tipsy-turvy spinning disc model to balance things, controlled, in part, by my advanced hula-hooping skills whereby at least one party would be up (positive) and some parties would be down (negative).  Clearly I have lost my hip rotating skill or the hula-hoop has gotten heavier, possibly a combination of both.

Unlike the financial recession, I doubt that anyone will hand me money to get better.  (Despite the fact that money probably wouldn’t solve my problems, it would be nice gesture.)  I think that one reason I was able to always keep something in the positive was the rotating action, where I could use the existing momentum to pull something else up into the positive.  Now that I’m starting with no momentum, or in some instances.. having to stop the negative momentum… things will prove to be a challenge over these coming weeks.

I avoid admitting defeat, but its hard to see the bright side when every thought/idea you have is tossed aside.

Maybe I should try poetry.