Brian's World

I only think in the form on crunching numbers

That is only one of my favorite lines of music ever. While I disapprove with the other lines in the song, regarding some type of one night stand, I still enjoy that line. Just take it out of context for a little while. Why do I like that line so much? Because I think it describes me a pretty good amount. I like numbers, they’re concrete things I can compare, evaluate, base decisions off of. If you ask me, anything in live can be represented by some form of numbers. Clearly things would have to be quantized and scaled appropriately, but thats a minor detail to be worked out later.

For me things make sense, and I like them to. I dislike things that don’t make sense, or things I can’t make into some type sense. Justification is critical to me, I can’t do things without thinking about the next 5 minutes, the next day, and for a few events, the next year or a few. Futurecasting how something will effect me probably isn’t the best idea in the world, but its certainly more effective than “do it now and worry about the consequences later.” See thats just stupid, because you’ve chosen to acknowledge their are consequences, but you’ve decided to ignore recognizing what they specifically are or developing them into logical thoughts.

That was all very abstract, but all very good. My obsession with that song lyric will likely inspire a few more posts, but I am having a very difficult time getting the song to listen to. Stupid internet. Lets talk weekend, but keep it abstract.

I feel like hanging out with me is a burden for others. Seriously, yea… I think that by hanging out with me, it is more work for the person who is there besides me.. or people. I’m terrible at having fun, coming up with plans, fitting in with others. The list goes on but if I don’t cut it off now I might strike something I’m uncomfortable blogging about, I’m not really sure if there is anything but thats enough “flaws of Brian” for now. That would make cool game show… lol

Friday/Saturday nights tend to be the epitome of this, what do I usually do? Theres at least an 85% chance I’m looking at a screen; movie, computer, or television. The other 15% of the time, I might be stalling time to get a bite to eat. A common tactic of mine that I’ve worked to cut down on because of its financial effects. Eating food buys time, not a solution. Driving is also a common tactic for finding a solution. Driving in itself is rarely the solution, unless you’ve planned to go somewhere far away. I’m terrible at driving nowhere. Why? Because I like to know where I’m going, I like to be thinking how I can get there better, what lane do I need to be in so I don’t die, etc.

It wouldn’t be impossible to boil this down to a statement like “Brian is a burden to hangout with”, something I would quantize with negative points. I have a negative social value, I detract from social situations and gatherings. Just using the phrase “social situations” sounds lame, gatherings is the correct word. I don’t mean to be a burden, but I dislike the assumption that I have this wealth of ideas and knowledge I can inject into social situations.. erm gatherings. If we were socially working on computers, programming, etc, I might have a wealth of knowledge to inject. If we are looking for something fun to do on a Friday night, which probably rules out computers, I am not the person you want to ask.

Through this I let down a lot of people, and I feel bad. I’m in no position to make it up to them because I don’t know how. I can’t plan a gathering or host a party, that would be a joke. I would likely have -1 attendance, yes I have support to back this up.

There is one things that frustrates me to the maximum. When people have to use disclaimers about my inexperience with a situation. If I’m unsure of certain information I’m going to ask for it on my own, I really do not like it when others share things Brian isn’t experienced with. Why? Because I’m not experienced with very much, no surprise there, but the things I haven’t directly experienced I’ve probably given thought to. And I have a secret, I don’t know half of what I do, I just make it up as I go along and I convince people I know what I’m doing Ask me and thats what I thinkmakes a leader successful. Good example, I’ve never put a rain covering on an RPI TV. I was asked if I knew how, and if I could show a few people how to because apparently no one was 100% sure how to do it correctly. I said sure, I knew what I was doing. Did I? Nope. I hadn’t touched a rain covering ever. Did that matter? Nope. I made it up as I went along, and I did a pretty darn good job at it as well. No one asked if I was making this up, no one was like your an idiot. I just did and made it work. So please, never tell people I don’t know how to deal with a certain situation, or I don’t know what I’m doing, or I’m just making this all up. You never really know what I have in store, I’m not a moron most of the time. just get super embarrassed when I really shouldn’t be for any reason. I already know how I’m going to handle it, and just because I haven’t shared that one specific plan out of the hundreds I have in my head doesn’t mean its not there.

Its all in the numbers…

bathroom

This blog is one of my later posts. I really would like to be in bed right now, and I probably should be going to sleep but of course I cannot. If I could, I would, but I can’t. The occupant of the room connected to ours via the shared bathroom has this thing where he goes in the bathroom late at night and takes forever in there. Literally, forever. I don’t know what he does because I hear no water running (sink, shower, toilet), he is clearly not on the can because I hear the occasional footsteps. Last night I caught the tail end of it, waiting 25 mins for him to finish up whatever he is doing. Tonight, who knows how long it will be.

Yes, in theory I could “walk in” but I would hate to be interrupted, so I won’t do that to him. I just get frustrated when I would like to take a maximum of 5 minutes to brush my teeth, fill up my water bottle, and urinate, then fall asleep. Nothing too long or unreasonable.

I take my showers in the morning trying to be as time sensitive as possible in case he needs to use the restroom (tho I’m unsure if my presence would actually stop him). See if I was in there it would be pretty clear as to what I’m doing, the water would be running, you could here me brushing my teeth, or I would be flushing the toilet, maybe 20 seconds of silence when I comb my hair, none of this 20 min junk.

This week is getting off to a slow start, it already seems later than Monday. Ok, technically its Tuesday now. I might want to blog about 9/11, I’m not sure. I thought I might have written something last year, I did not.

But last September I did write about laundry, and this September is no different.

Each “wing” on BARH has its own laundry location. My wing’s location is on the bottom floor, 4 floors below me. Its a small walk down the stairs to get there, but nothing impossible. The problem is that only 1 washing machine is working out of the 2. How am I suppose to do 2 loads of laundry with 1 machine? Well usually I run 2 loads at the same time, totally 1 hour 30 minutes of laundry time, which I can conviently fit on Friday morning from 9:15-10:45 + folding time, that would work out great with class starting at 11:00. The problem is that only 1 washer is working! That really changes my time, It turns my total laundry time to 2:00 + folding, which means I would have to start laundry before 9:00, not impossible, but a little early for me to be doing that kind of work.

So there could be a solution, I found there is another laundry station on the same floor as me, just in a different wing. I’m less comfortable over there tho, there are rooms all around it and people can watch me operate the machines and move my clothes around. I really dont care if they see my clothes, people get to see them anyways. I don’t know, I hope someone fixes the washing machine.

I just checking, still the bathroom is in use. Grr, its getting late for Brian. This is one of those times last years room was ideal, neither of us took forever in the bathroom and it was very manageable. In the extreme case the bathroom was not accessable, one could always use the group facility down the hall.

I hear water running, maybe he is almost done.

I think the coast is clear, its time for me to quest in and roll into bed.

Goodnight moon.

415A

So here I am, back at RPI. I’ll be honest, this is my fifth attempt at getting a blog out, lately I must have some form of blog constipation or what not. I’ve gotten a few paragraphs into it and then I say to myself… you can finish this later. So I come back to it a few days later, and its no longer timely. I had blogs in the works for move in day, the day before move in, last weekend, etc but they all got scrapped. Stupid me.

I’m not going to give up on this one, class starts at 11 and its only 10:10 right now. I can get this one out. Whew.

As I started with, I’m back here at RPI. Summer has come and gone, fast like always. Recent discussions have revealed that I really didn’t do much this summer. I worked at Mass Mutual for most of the time, where I wrote a php script to automate my work; and I did a little work in the mornings getting in touch with computers at a lower level. I like to step down off the programming, server, network platform and get involved with hardware and users sometimes. Its gives my mind a good change of thought, no more effeciency questions, no more uptime, just making things work. (pronounce the period)

I’m bad at summer, I think I took one “vacation” the entire time, and by vacation I mean Wednesday-Friday off. That was it, 3 days of actual rest and I’m kind of upset about it. I worked fairly hard, 9-5 or 8-4 most days and I get paid a decent rate (it averaged to $11.75 an hour). I haven’t multiplied it out by the number of weeks, but I’m sure I made a small chunk of change. I’ve been doing this for a little while, the past 2 years I’ve worked 8-12 all summer, so one would draw the conclusion that I’ve made x dollars. And yes, I have gotten paychecks that sum up to x dollars, but the difference comes in at how I can access my money. None of the money I’ve earned through work is something I can freely spend or do as I please with. The paychecks are in my name, yes, the account is in my name (and possibly my fathers) but the money I put in certainly isn’t mine to use. My parents like to control it, and its very frustrating. You know when you are young and people give you bonds/money for no reason. You’re 2, what are you going to do with a $10 bill. Nothing, so my parents would put that in the bank. Then came the time when all that money got transfered into a “college fund”, probably when I was in middle school. I knew little of my finances then, but I was ok having my account drained because I hadn’t “earned” that money, I has just been alive, thats all the work I had to do. Now that I am doing work, I’d really like that money to be mine to spend. I have no problem contributing some of it to my college fund or paying for my books or parking permit, thats fine by me. But I’d also like to spend it on item y, buy a z but I can’t. See the money is at some stupid “Polish National Credit Union”, I’m half polish so my dad thinks we, my brother and I, should put our monies there. Of course our savings accounts require us to physically go to the bank to do anything with the money, great if there was Polish National Credit Union in Troy. Of course my parents assure me that they will transfer funds to my debit card as necessary, but I can’t just say put x dollars on the debit card. (pronounce it) They want a reason, and most of my ideas are not reasons they would accept. I wanted to buy a hard drive this summer, and it took 2 weeks of fighting to explain to my parents what a hard drive was, and how I had filled up the other one. The debit card statement is sent to my parents, primarily because its a shared card with me and my brother… I’m not allowed one of my own, and I’m ok with that. Any drop in funds greater than the cost to fill up the Volvo with gas is scrutinized, it must be explained, accounted for. Yes, if this was their money I would say sure, scrutinize it all you want. But please, its my money, let me do as I please with it. I was the one that worked 9-5 everyday -3 this summer, not you. (I know my dad took more than 3 days off, Mom and Kevin hung out not working).

I dunno where I’m going, it just frustrates me when I can’t do things with money that I’ve earned. Maybe my parents are trying to teach me fiscal responsibility or something like that, but I’m moderately mature enough not to spend tons of money without thinking about it. I get uneasy when I hear people talk about how they spend money, buy this and that, when there are equivalent things, even smaller things, like an $50 stick of RAM I might like, that I can’t get because of the bureaucracy I call home. Its lame and frustrating to me.

Time management is something I need to work more on this semester.. but its been 30 minutes and my time is up. We should continue this later…