Brian's World

Christmas Eve

I wouldn’t write a blog on x-mas eve unless I thought it was important or especially deserving of my time because x-mas eve tends to be a rather traditional night for me. But alas things are moderately upsetting to me and the water in my eyes is not representative of tears of x-mas joy.

On Christmas Eve its traditional for us to have the Michalski side of the family over for a Polish Dinner. Everyone enjoys some Polish food and makes fun of me for not eating any of it. After dinner we exchange gifts from names we pull in a pollyanna. I just had to look that word up, the definition is rather relevant ” A person regarded as being foolishly or blindly optimistic.” Ok so we’re using it wrong, but its essentially ‘Secret Santa’, with enough restrictions that there tend to be only a handful of potential outcomes. I’ve gotten used to getting insulted at dinner. I’m sorry I don’t like herring, kapusta [cabbage], or lima bean soup; nor am I a huge fan of pierogis [I’ll eat ~3 with lots of Ketchup]. I finish early and spend time sorting gifts in as efficient a way as possible, placing gifts where people will be sitting. Everyone joins me in the living room and usually we all open gifts in one big hoorah… but today dad decided we go in series.. one person at a time. La te da, everyone opened their gifts… when we got to the person who I got gifts for [Laura]. My mom helped me out with the shopping since I was at college and stuff and got her a fleece top that happen to match the color she was wearing as well as the color I was wearing. Everyone had to make fun of that for several minutes… then she opened a gift I bought her [Some lotions in a little bag thingy] and everyone decided there was no way I bought that on my own and that Katie must have helped or that somehow being in college has taught me oh so much about the ladies. I denied all that but no one believed me, likely because I was blushing as I tend to do. I ended up putting my head between my knees and just hanging out like that. I don’t like blushing. I opened my gifts, nothing awesomely exciting but that is to be expected. I got some gift cards and a fleece vest.

Everyone left blah de blah.. we cleaned up as usual. Then came one of the least pleasant parts of the evening.. carrying in the Christmas presents from the living room. A few years ago my parents stopped trying to hide Christmas gifts so they just pile up in the living room. Being tired from acting as hosts all night, they have Kevin and I bring the gifts in. I find this very lame and depressing. I enjoy waking up early tomorrow morning and trotting downstairs to marvel and the gifts under the tree thinking about whats inside. I dislike knowing in advance what gifts are mine, etc. I tried to carry as many of Kevin’s gifts as possible, so he can be moderately surprised with the presents. Unfortunately I carry gifts faster than him, so I had to carry a lot of gifts for me as well. Statistically speaking there is a low probability that there will many surprises tomorrow, but it is Christmas so I will remain optimistic… you never know what magic Santa will work.

I am also saddened by my family’s lack of Christmas excitement for tomorrow. While I don’t have high hopes for my presents, I am excited to open them! My family will be attending 10:30 mass at Mater Dolorosa. Since that is “early” in the morning, my mother, father, and brother have agreed that we shall open gifts after mass. Grr to them! I wake up early on Christmas just to rush down and get ready to open gifts.

I could blog about the amount of work to do and stuff like that, but thats not in the Christmas Spirit.

So I bid you all a good night, and I hope Santa delivers great gifts to all of you!

To quote my favorite Christmas book, this is the first year we haven’t read it as a family… “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

Winter Vacation

I got home from RPI last Friday after my last final, Physics 1. Overall I would say finals went well this semester, I didn’t find anything unbearably difficult. My highest grade on the Final Exam was in DSA, which I am moderately happy about. I was able to do well when it was most important, the other classes ranged between A’s and B’s… acceptable by my book.

The day after I came home, Saturday, Katie and I went down to New York City.. our second trip of this nature. Overall this trip went better, I like to think I was much better at navigating us from A to B than the previous trip, and overall I was much more stable. While I do not know what the future holds for me, I would not be opposed to living in a very populated city environment. Walking is something I enjoy, and a city facilitates lots of that.

I spent the majority of Sunday and Monday installing OS X 10.5 here, its pretty neat. I’m not a big mac fan, mainly because I enjoy the flexibility Windows offers, but there are some things a Mac is better at than a Windows box, so I’m using it for that. Right now I’m actually blogging from Mac, I’ve yet to unpack my windows desktop [primarily due to lack of desk space or KVM availability]. My mouse is broken, so clicking doesn’t work.. I like to blame it on the Mac for being stupid about mice.. buts thats probably not very fair.

Things are certainly busy around here over break. Between Digital Signage at RPI, cleaning up this Widget I’ve been working on [Dashcode is a great mac program btw], and today I just got called in on another project to work on a mockup/demo in ASP.net. I don’t know much ASP or .NET stuff, but tomorrow morning I’ll quickly figure out how do-able the project is and see where I go. I hate saying no to opportunities, especially moderately cool ones, but I am positive my mental health sometimes suffers.

Christmas is around the corner and I failed to make a list for my parents to shop for me, they have forewarned me failure is likely. I have a few ideas floating around out there, but I doubt they will find them in stores. I wish I was better at thinking up what I want. For example tonight I realized I need a Multimeter. I was fixing this TA3F [Mini XLR] to XLR cable that someone broke, and to verify/test the pinouts I was using a battery tester, some wires, and paper to hold the connection open. I’ve been doing this for several years now so I’m pretty good at it… but stupid Shure people.. you should not make the Red cable Negative, that is very counterintuitive to me… Black should be Negative, Red Positive, and the other one Ground. Please fix this in all of your cables. It only took me the better part of 2 hours to repair it, I can only hope it works in the morning for them.

I should be going to bed, I was hoping to konk off at 11:00 and wake up at 7:00, but I guess I’ll have to live with 6.2 hours of sleep for tomorrow.

Goodnight Moon

Part One of a Three Part Series

Tonight was the RPI TV elections meeting, certainly an interesting meeting at that. I headed down around 8:20 from BARH, strolling into the room where our executive meeting was held at 8:28. Only Sean and I were there, thats ok I thought, everyone must be out running late. 20 minutes pass, everyone is still running late. Apparently there was to be no Exec meeting tonight, which would have been ok if I was told that. Yes, typically I can rely on Google Calendar to show me when there are meetings, and no, I didn’t receive an email with an agenda; but I didn’t find either of these facts compelling enough to convince me there wasn’t a meeting. And so the problems began.

I had been very worried about this meeting for quite some time, mainly because my plan was non-existent. At last years election I had a very strong idea where I was going. Sure, I had to nominate myself, but at least I knew I was doing news and why I was doing it. This year was trickier, I had narrowed down the list of positions I was interested in running for to 4, each with their own reasoning and logic. I failed to narrow that list down to one, because I placed high value on where everyone else wanted to run. I understand quite well that I should run where I want and ignore everyone else, but I also understand that doing something unexpected, especially from a person such as myself who is typically very predictable, changes much in the social dynamics.

As the elections progressed, I was quickly nominated for the position of ‘Station Manager’ someone seconded, I do not recall who. I failed to “accept” or “decline” the nomination, but the lack of speech was interpreted as an acceptance. I was voted in that position by a majority, I of course abstained, and the meeting went on. What does my new position entail? To the constitutional amendment.. submit productions for campus broadcast, maintain RPI TV’s media library, keep an archive of every production, and coordinate the care, storage, etc for all club equipment. In summary, I put DVDs in a DVD player, operate a book shelf, and make sure people put things back when they are done. This position operates under the VP of Operations. Essentially this position involves lots of doing, and not very much thinking at all. I like thinking, I like it a lot. I can do things when I have to, but I think that thinking about them sometimes is more fun. Sure, I’m the first person to serve in the position, but I’ll say its very uncomfortable.

I abstained when voting for the new constitution, I agree with some parts and disagree with others. The new station manager position works I think, but it doesn’t fit well into this overall scheme. As a whole, the “non important” positions of the club exist in a state of limbo, some exist as the old show based operations of the club, and some are shifted over to the new role based system. I assume people will argue over my use of the phrase “non important” and I would have no problem explaining this position to people, not only based on how the positions are defined but also as the positions are filled. Participating in this discussion in real life would not work well, I will likely have trouble with the English.

I guess I’m frustrated at climbing the ladder. I know that I am one of the least known officers of the club among non-exec members. I don’t direct or organize any productions besides senate meetings, I do not send mass communications to members, nor do I speak very regularly at meetings. I was never introduced at NRB or any other meeting, nor have I wanted to try extra hard to introduce myself to new members. I guess logically it makes sense, as News Manager [one of the lowest positions] I climbed the latter reasonable, and those who started higher than me climbed significantly higher.

I know I should be more positive with my outlook on this position, but its still not something I would be super proud to put on a business card. Maybe if we had a “station” and not just 2 dvd decks this might be a slightly more important position. I have to call to question the design of this position, could it have been designed to facilitate a fourth person feeling important by giving them duties but realistically those duties are moderately unimportant? I do wonder.

I will not call the elections fraudulent, nor would I say they were the best ever. But according to the letter of the constitution, that was a legitimate election so come January 1st I am not legitimately station manager. Since RPI TV lacks a station I will rename myself “Closet Manager”.

I’m also surprised at myself, I failed to see what was obviously brewing for a few weeks. Maybe with more notice I could have figured out a better plan but I clearly didn’t see what I should have, stupid me. People are people, and I should not try to credit them as anything else. I will hold out hope that somewhere people are honest and lack self interest.

For the record, I do not hate Mr. Emala, while he feels I “railed” on him for a paragraph in a previous blog I did no such thing, unless Mr. Emala feels he is solely defined by the symbols I choose to use.

Part 2 coming soon, but for now I shall head to bed. DSA test tomorrow, I’m worried.

You should be too.