Brian's World

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.

Negative

‘Twas an interesting few days, as of late.  On a more social level I’ve found the tides continue to turn against me, or more strongly push in the opposite direction.  On a professional level, more people are using Concerto which is cool.  It seems appropriate to focus on the social issues for the time being, recognizing that the professional issues may be better suited to a dedicated гардеробиConcerto post or musing on the Web Tech Blog.

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.