My wild crime spree came to an abrupt end tonight when I was given a ticket for jaywalking.
Yes, you read that right. Jaywalking. I got a citation for jaywalking. Don't believe me? See for yourself. Yes, I thought the same thing you're thinking now. "That only happens on television, to one or more of The Three Stooges, or in cartoons." And, in my life.
It was a flagrant violation. I looked both ways, saw a police car parked along the opposite side of the street but as there was no traffic coming from either direction, started across the street. I was in the middle of the street when the police cruiser pulled out. I stopped to wait. He stopped. I waved, finished crossing the street, and was on my way into a drugstore when I saw the flashing red and blue lights reflected in the glass.
I immediately grokked what was about to happen. I stopped, turned around, walked back to the curb, and waited for the two police officers to pull over and get out of their car. One asked me for my license, and explained that I'd jaywalked (you think?), and said that he was going to issue me a citation. I smiled and cooperated. What was I going to do or say? "You'll never get me alive, copper!" Sure. Good luck with that.
They were firm, polite, even gracious, but I think we all appreciated the humor of the moment. I certainly did. The other officer (the one not writing the ticket) explained that they had just left their pre-patrol briefing during which they had been told that 40% of San Jose's automobile-pedestrian encounters were the result of jaywalking, a statistic that is four times the national average. As a result, they were told to start issuing citations to jaywalkers. Our business concluded, I went into the drugstore and they did whatever they do after issuing a citation.
Yes, boys and girls, let my comeuppance be a lesson that crime doesn't pay!
Posted by Kurt Wall at 19:45 2008-02-26 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Recruiters (Work)
When it rains, it pours. I go through periods where recruiters are coming out of the woodwork to contact me. Today's events suggest just such a spell might be starting.
First, someone named Joy from Eclectic Consulting (or Eclectic Recruiting, I wasn't paying enough attention) called me at my desk to see if I was interested in a storage support position. No, I'm not. Do I know anyone who might be interested? No, I don't.
To her credit, unlike a certain class of slime-ball headhunters, she fully identified herself, stated for whom she was working, and explained she realized she was calling me at work. I still wasn't interested, but I respected her candor. What I didn't like about the situation was that she was called me at work and that the call was unsolicited. I sent a note to my manager about it.
When I got home, I had email from a recruiting firm with whom I had previously worked. Was I interested in yet another position in storage system support. I haven't responded yet, but I will. The answer is a firm, emphatic, "No." I learned a lot at Panasas. In the present context, the relevant insight is that storage is interesting, but technical support, even two levels removed from immediate customer contact, isn't for me. It doesn't play to my strengths and I haven't the personality for it.
So, The Night of the Living Dead Recruiter is upon me once again. Like a kidney stone, this, too, shall pass.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 16:47 2008-02-25 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Flu (General)
I have the flu. Rather, I'm recovering from the flu. Or at least I hope I am. That flu shot I had in October was ineffective insofar as it targeted the wrong influenza virii. Most of the time, the professionals guess right, or right enough. The missed the mark this year.
It's hit my group at work pretty hard. There are about a dozen of us in the Santa Clara office. Two guys have already had it and Lonni and I came down with it more or less simultaneously on Thursday. Lonni, being the better man, went to work Friday. I stayed home and whimpered. When I asked him on IRC why he didn't stay home, he said, "Everyone there is sick." He'd taken Mrs. Llama to the doctor the previous afternoon; Little Llama was muddling through the flu as best as children can.
As I said, I stayed home and whimpered when I wasn't sleeping. I tried to work remotely, but the aches made it hard to sit in one position for very long and my throbbing head didn't take well to staring at a computer screen. That left sleeping it off as the only feasible option. I ventured out to get some ibuprofen to take the edge off the achiness but otherwise stayed home.
Therein lies a fascinating, serendipitous discovery. In my befogged state, I asked the clerk for the wrong box of Motrin, which error I didn't discover until I got home. I wound up with children's chewable Motrin (orange-flavored). Not willing to go back out, I ate 8 of them (at 100mg each, that's my normal dosage). Wow! When you chew them, the medicine gets into your system much faster.
I'll remember that the next time I want pain relief Right Now, Dammit!
So, I hope Lonni, Scott, and Zem are feeling better.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 14:03 2008-02-24 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Kickin' My Butt (Work)
Last week kicked my butt. Lonni was out of the office, traipsing around the southern California desert on a well-deserved vacation, so I was holding up the test harness at work.
In short, the test harness fell on me. I came in Monday morning to a mostly red test matrix. So much had failed I hardly knew where to start. I regressed some of the easier failures, but by the time I'd finished that and after several interrupts, the next nightly run had started. Tuesday morning was worse than Monday. By Wednesday, I started practicing, "Would you like fries with your order?" Meanwhile, I had installed on OS update on the wrong machine, which caused almost complete test failure for a pending beta release. So, after installing the OS update in the right place, I ran the tests manually, they passed, and the beta went out the door. About 12 hours later than it should have. Sigh.
By Wednesday, I'd identified a couple of significant breakages, just in time for the source tree to get locked against updates. Fewer things broke overnight, so Thursday's test results weren't quite so depressing, but with the source tree locked, no fixes were getting in. By Friday, I was pretty much toast. I'd worked until 7:00 p.m. three nights then came home and worked from 9:00-ish until after midnight. I'd love to say that I had a lot of work to do, and that would be true, but it was really more about not being good enough yet at my job to work as efficiently as I'd like, so I had to trade efficiency for long hours.
Butt-kicking aside, the week wasn't a total loss. The test matrix was mostly green by Friday. More importantly, I was able to identify what I didn't know, didn't understand, and wasn't sure how to do, so I at least had a set of questions to ask Tuesday morning. The other thing I realized is that I need to spend more time learning how to do my job, which compelled me to cancel my plans to attend a training class—for the time being, I think my time is better spent becoming at least half as effective as Lonni rather than enhancing my Perl chops.
I'm glad the week is over and glad that Lonni will be back in the office Tuesday. He might beat me with The Bone™, but at least I have learned something. Oh, and I now totally grok why he needed help.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 12:31 2008-02-17 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Battlestar Galactica (Movies and TV)
Ugh. I tried to watch the original Battlestar Galactica series. I made it through the first disc and then realized I couldn't watch anymore.
The acting feels overdone and the special effects are weak, especially by modern standards. What killed it for me, though, wasn't the melodrama or the special effects; it was the heavy dose of Mormon theology. Before their destruction, the twelve colonies are ruled by a so-called Quorum of the Twelve; all human life sprang from the planet Kolob; the wedding of Apollo and Serina is called "a sealing;" Adama holds the "keys." Those elements and concepts come straight out of what Mormons pass off as their theology. I want no part of it, even in a fictional setting. That the acting and the special effects suck just made it easier to remove the rest of the discs from my Netflix queue.
The curious thing is that I don't remember these things from the original broadcast. Likely I just wasn't paying attention and, at the time, didn't know what I know now about the Mormon cult. Regardless, it was quite a surprise to see tenets of Mormonism on display this way.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:48 2008-02-11 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
New (to me) Music (Music)
Lonni gripes from time to time about his "tradition of being about 6 months behind the rest of the world in discovering new good music." Good news, Lonni, I'm farther behind than you and will never catch up.
Seriously, no one could accurately accuse me of being anywhere near close to current in my familiarity with music and certainly not in my musical tastes. A list of the new-to-me music I've found since November of 2007 includes the following:
- Rolle
- try^d
- Hungry Lucy
- Mantrix
- Plain White Ts
- Nursery Crimes
- Paramore
- Marion Raven
- Voyager
- David Gray
- Glass Candy
- Burial
- Dijel
- Shannon Curtis
- Sandrine
- Roby Tav
- Katie Todd
Some of these I found on eMusic and some I found on Amie Street. The styles are all over the map, trance, alt rock, indy rock, pop, power pop. I guess that just means my musical preferences don't fit into neat 'n' tidy boxes. So, there you are, Lonni. You're not as far behind as me, so take heart! :-)
Posted by Kurt Wall at 10:47 2008-02-10 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Living With Illness (Tirades)
I have ankylosing spondylitis. The link will tell you about it in way more detail than you probably want to know. The picture below shows you the effect.
Personally, I find this x-ray fascinating for its similarity to a piece of bamboo. It's a classic illustration of "bamboo spine." That's what my spine looks like. In my particular case, there's minimal lumbar involvement, which is unusual, but my cervical, thoracic, and sacral vertebrae all look like that picture. Anyone who's ever met me has noticed and remarked on my stiff neck. It's tedious (the stiffness, not the remarks) at times, but I'm thankful to be upright, more or less. The downside to being fused vertically is that I can't see my zipper, for example (mirrors are good), and have to tilt my entire upper body backward if I want to empty a can of soda (straws are good).
I don't mention this to solicit sympathy. I don't want it and don't need it. I manage just fine, modulo some adjustments or accommodations necessary to make as I make my way through my day.
That's what this post is about. I have to make the adjustments. I don't expect or anticipate that the world is going to make an exception for me. Help me out, perhaps, if I'm physically unable to do something, but, no, the world didn't stop and my life didn't come to an end because I have AS. I know people far sicker than me who get up every day and go to work, raise their families, and generally have a full, happy life despite their physical problems. So, I have a low tolerance for people who want special treatment because they are sick or disabled. I just know from personal experience and from watching others who are much worse off than me that life can and does go on.
To be sure, there are some people so debilitated by illness that they must be taken care of and provided for by others. But, IMNHSO, far too many people just give up. A friend of mine comments from time to time that she doesn't know how people live with chronic pain and discomfort. I can't speak for anyone else. As for me, honestly, there isn't that much pain anymore (although that would change if I quit taking Humira (a progression from Etanercept which was a progression from Voltaren which was a progression from sulfasalazine which was a progression from ibuprofen which was a progression from aspirin). But, to answer my friend, it's not the discomfort or the pain that trouble me. Rather, it is the limitations in what I can do, comfortably or otherwise. Beyond that, though, it never occurred to me that just giving up was an option. The challenges I face are tame in comparison to someone who can't walk, for example.
I just kept on living because I couldn't just stop living. I'm not disabled. I'm not incapacitated. I'm not weak. I'm just stiff. Okay, I'm really stiff. And I get tired sooner than I would like. At this point, I've been stiff and/or sore for so long that it has simply become part of my life; it's wormed its way into my thinking, into how I plan my activities and move through my day. AS has become part of the landscape in which I live my life, but AS is not my life and does not dominate it. It's just part of it.
So, no, I'm not terribly tolerant of those who would sit on a pity pot asking for a handout because they are sick.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:08 2008-02-04 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)