Brian's World

Congestion

I didn’t write for all of January.  That is very disappointing to me.  I had plenty of things to talk about and  a good number of drafts at the ready.  It noticed that most of my drafts shared my negative views about different groups, social behaviors, people, etc. and I really wanted to be positive for a change.  Therefore all those drafts have been deleted.  I’m confident I can recall all the juicy stuff anyways should the need arise.

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.

Divisions

As of late, I’ve become increasing aware of segments that are forming around me.  While it could be just me, I feel like those whom I interact with are starting to divide themselves into different social groups.  My analysis has yet to determine if splitting into groups is a positive or a negative thing, but the notion of having separately operating entities doesn’t thrill me too much.

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.

Preflecting

Over the summer I had the chance to catch up with a colleague I worked with 8-10 years ago.  We got talking about “the good old days” of our youth, which was a little strange because I’m still in college and many would consider my current state moderately youthful.  I believe we both came to agreement that our high school days were some of the best days of our lives, or at least measurably better than those at college.  If you had asked me the question 4 years ago, during the fall of my Senior year at SHHS, I might have said something like “Well, high school has been pretty good to me, but I’d like to think I can make college even better.”  Alas, that statement was incorrect, I have not accomplished a quarter of what I had hoped to over these past 3.5 years at RPI.

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.