Posted by Daniel Lyons
Wed, 07 Jul 2004 12:33:53 GMT
Today was the kind of day government employees dream about. No meetings, no distractions, just nice even-paced coding all day. There was a bit of rain.
In truth, I spent the better part of today debugging a single function with about 10 lines of extremely simple code. The problem turned out to be a property value which was 0 instead of 1, and which prevented an SSL connection from occurring in HTTPSecureSocket. Apparently, 0 means “SSLv2” and 1 means “SSLv3, or 2 if it isn’t there.” Would have been nice to have known in advance. Part of the day was spent debating database systems, too. And a good chunk of the day was spent documenting the existing interface. You can’t code a system you can’t understand. :) I also wrote my first progress bar.
Bill, his mother and I ate at a place that I can’t recall the name of. It was nice, we got takeout. It was hot. He also gave me this citrus fizzy thing, which tasted bland at the time, but is screwing my stomach something fierce right now. We wound up going to Albertson’s so I could get a batch of Prilosec, and also some bread. I was hoping to get these energy bars my father used to get: a dense bread with raisins and nuts in it. Instead I got dense oatmeal bars and a loaf of Challah (which I can now pronounce properly, but I probably can’t spell properly).
Nothing came of the security guard’s threats. No meeting was scheduled. Nobody came and spoke to us at 6 about having to leave. Completely uneventful.
What a great job. :)
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Tue, 06 Jul 2004 20:33:00 GMT
Night before last, Alex wanted to go see a professional fireworks display
somewhere big, so that her clan and everyone could socialize and whatnot. We
decided to go to the city display at Balloon Fiesta Park because of all the
buzzing and chattering about how much money they were spending on the
fireworks ($35,000, IIRC).
So we left at about 9, which meant we spent about 50 hellish minutes
driving in. So then we walked in and stood near the edge of the park when the
fireworks started. Just after the second or so burst, someone in a motorized
wheelchair went skirting past and had it flip over, so we got the treat of
seeing the crowds cheering at the pretty on the left and a poor old person
unable to get up on the right, for a moment until a couple people jumped up
and went over to help.
The fireworks themselves were quite nice. After a big burst, everyone
around us stood up and slapped their lawn chairs together and started running
towards the exit, and slowly it dawned on us that the event was over 15
minutes after getting there. Alex had proposed leaving early to get a jump on
the traffic, but that plan was clearly out of the question as we saw the red-light
molasses slowly drifting out the main exit.
We decided to hang out, so we spent an hour at the park before trying to
leave. Leaving at 11:15 meant that it only took 15 minutes to get out, but I
was zonked and annoyed. On the way home from the parent’s place I saw a
homeless guy sleeping on the bus stop bench. All the problems made me feel
like the celebration was misplaced. “Yaaaay! We’re all a bunch of lame
fucksacks with no concern for fellow human beings! But we love pretty
colors!”
Yesterday for lunch I wound up going to Wendy’s and waiting in line for 30
minutes. So it’s just been kind of a wait-in-line-forever kind of week.
In the evening at work we wound up getting yelled at by a fat ‘n ugly
security guard who wanted us to leave by 6 and “why can’t you people get
it through your heads.” Michael dealt with it about like I would, by
explaining that we pay for it and if he has a problem with it he can go talk
to his supervisor about it; he’ll meet with whoever, it doesn’t matter, we pay
for it and fuck anyone who has a problem with it. I’m annoyed at the guard
for yelling at us, if anything comes of it I hope Michael emphasizes the
incredible rudeness of having your guard yell at your tenents and this grody
fucksack gets fired. There’s a Sikh temple down the road, why can’t we have
your standard Sikh security guards? Those guys wouldn’t raise their voice if
you were violating a puppy (though you’d be violated pretty well
yourself).
Bill took his girlfriend Talia and myself out to eat at a place called
Cowgirl’s. I had a game burger which had about 3 different types of meat in
it, it was very good. Then we saw a Japanese import movie named something
like “100 Monsters,” which had great atmosphere and theme, but
(being from the 70’s) was somewhat lacking in terms of special effects. I
would never let that kill my appreciation of a movie, especially when it can’t
be helped, so I guess I can say I recommend it.
Work is still excellent; I wound up getting to write AppleScript and
REALbasic yesterday. Michael gave me another two projects to work on. I can
see why he is having trouble getting things done—there’s so much work to
be done, and all in different places. Today should be interesting as well.
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Sun, 04 Jul 2004 10:19:00 GMT
So a week ago when we turned in our 30 days notice, we also submitted a
work order for our damned garbage disposal in the sink. Probably as a side
effect of making ice cream and sending a cup or so of silt down the drain, the
damn thing stopped working. Now, being not the slightest bit mechanically
inclined, I know there’s a button on these things that makes ‘em work again, I
just have no idea where it is located and can’t find it when I try.
So a week went by and nobody came to fix it. I’m not fond of the idea of
workmen entering my home when I’m not there, especially when the only things
I’ve unpacked are computation-related (though Alex had to point this out). So
I told them to call me and make an appointment. That hasn’t happened; I have
this nifty device called a cellular phone, which has these neato
features like, telling me when I missed a call, and voice mail, which means
the Man keeps my messages for me if I’m out of service. Didn’t have either of
those all week.
There are two people who are management-types here at Comanche Wells. The
first is a wonderful youth named Key who generally is helpful and makes sure
that when deadlines are set, they get met and so-forth. The other is a tard
named Christy, who is the villain in the transcript that follows. She clearly
has a great deal of experience in the field of pissing people off over the
phone while sounding helpful and getting you nowhere. So this is more-or-less
what happened:
- Call desk, it’s Villain #1. “A week ago, I submitted a work order
for our disposal, and it’s still not fixed. Why?” “I don’t
know, I’ll call the maint-men and ask ‘em to call you.”
25 minutes later, call desk again. It’s Villain #1.
Me: “Hi Christy, it’s Dan in XXXX again; I’m wondering why
nobody has called me yet.”
Villain: “Well, you see, I called the work men and they said
they had been trying to call you all week and they never got an
answer.”
Me: “Well, I would believe that, except I have this nifty cell
phone that tells me when I miss a call, and I haven’t missed any all
week, nor have I been out of the service area.”
Villain: “Right, but you said that you wanted them to call to
set up an appointment before coming in.” Blah blah, other
stuff I don’t hear
Me: “Christy, what I don’t need right now is excuses. I need a
working disposal.”
Villain: Angry, hissy, trying to remain calm, talking fast, hangs up.
Me: Laughing.
- 45 minutes later, we have working disposal. God I love being an
asshole!
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Sun, 04 Jul 2004 10:18:00 GMT
People often ask me (not really, but I’ll pretend), “Dan! Why don’t
you permit comments on your blog? That would be so rad! I mean,
seriously!”
Here’s
why. Comments are there for squeaky girls with no self-esteem, so they
can see that every guy on the block actually wants to fuck them. Comments are
also there for lame guys with no self-esteem, to enable them to find girls
with low self-esteem. Comments are there to make your blog an interactive
medium; well guess what? If you want to “post something about my
blog” you can go get your own damn blog with no readers, and using the
power of the permalink, you can jolly-well link to whatever I said that pissed
you off.
Comments are an artifact of Slashdot, to
enable geeks to swing their mighty cocks and compare lengths in an expedient
fashion while at work. Comments create an information society of wit rather
than of content. For example, read <a
href=”http://www.plastic.com”>Plastic, where the most well-worded rebuttal
has the winner regardless of whether or not there are facts behind it. And
then we have Kuro5hin, ostensibly a forum
for article writers; 90% of the comments there are about the quality of the
writing, usually missing the point of the forum altogether. And then we have
blogging fucks like myself, who can’t write and have nothing to say
(like, for example, bitching about comments: no content whatsoever). It’s as
though in this new era, we have plenty of technology to use to speak our
minds, and empty minds filled with usage instructions. And that sounds really
witty, so I’m inclined not to believe what I just said.
And then we have LiveJournal. LiveJournal is basically a place where tards
can go and spill all their personal information and not be expected to at any
point, actually generate content. “Content,” my friends, is a Web
Developer word that means, “everything that doesn’t have to do with
pretty fonts,” or, in English, the part that isn’t logic or
presentation. The problem with LiveJournal is that it’s a dating service, and
only the men on LiveJournal seem to understand that. It’s a forum for people
to get into your life. You put up your interests just like a personals
service, and then you rant about your life so that people can
“know” you. And every girl who’s depressed because she just got
dumped has five guys with piercings commenting in her journal,
“awww… huggles”. “He’s not so bad! I like him! <img
src=”http://auctions.yahoo.com/html/images/icons/gift/valentines.gif”
alt=”heart”/> <img
src=”http://auctions.yahoo.com/html/images/icons/gift/valentines.gif”
alt=”heart” /> <img
src=”http://auctions.yahoo.com/html/images/icons/gift/valentines.gif”
alt=”heart” />” It makes me sick. And then when she rants about her
current boyfriend, they still read, thinking, “This is the price I pay
for happiness! Oh God, My Heart Yearns Like No Other” while the girls
think that nothing has changed and nothing will.
Well, by the Power of Fuck I declare Fuck You on LiveJournal.
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Sun, 04 Jul 2004 01:21:08 GMT
Working at Matterform Media is
definitely an interesting experience. On the first day, I was mostly doing
some routine image touchups and discussing XML. On the second day, I was
designing a database and writing XSLT. I expect (and hope) that it continues
to be this varied.
I took some code home and I expect I’ll be studying it and possibly
implementing it in a couple different languages shortly. I’m eager to
implement in the Cocoa framework, but it seems to be hair-raising to learn on
one’s own. Nothing at Matterform is implemented in Cocoa at this point in
time; everything is done in PHP or REALbasic. Still, Michael seems to be
content with whatever works; they have C code laying around, they have ancient
stuff that was originally in HyperCard. Michael doesn’t really seem to care
what the implementation language is, so long as the product works and can be
sold. In fact, every internal-use program we write, we are expected to
consider making a commercial product.
This level of commercialism is really quite new to me, but I find that it
is acceptable. I would rather be developing handy, interesting Mac programs
than developing dull satelite imaging programs. I wanted to be an application
developer, and here I am, that’s what I do. :)
I’m trying to think of a product I could write in my spare time that we
could sell, so that I could have my job title changed and make some pretty
serious money. That seems a long way off right now though, what with the move
and whatnot.
We still haven’t heard from Kent about our new apartment. I have agreed to
hire Tim and a friend of his to do the moving for us, at half the cost of the
UHaul and with movers carrying stuff for me rather than having to do all of
the carrying. They were happy about the money side of things too so I think
it will be pretty good, hopefully a less horrible move than the first one,
though I’m still going to be stressed about it.
Bill and I (mostly Bill) managed the migration of <a
href=”http://storytotell.org”>storytotell to this server, so now all of
these pages are going to becoming from the same machine. There seems to be
some lingering issues with email, but we’re going to have them sorted out
pretty soon.
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Sun, 04 Jul 2004 00:58:00 GMT
JoAnns is a nice New Mexican restaurant in Española. Driving past,
there isn’t much to the exterior to set it apart from the other thousand or so
New Mexican places in the area. The inside is a bit nicer, and there are some
big screen TV’s about, which I’m not particularly fond of.
I had the combination plate, Michael had the relleno plate. The chile was
hot—much hotter than I would have expected for a first visit, but it is
a local place and Michael informs me that they actually have their own chile
farm. The taco had shredded steak rather than ground beef, which always makes
for a winner in my opinion, and the enchilada seemed to have green chile
fillets inside improving the flavor. It was too much food for me to eat.
The food was about $10 a plate and extremely good though not very
experimental. I will definitely be checking it out again, after trying
Paragua’s and the other place Shipman recommended.
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Sat, 03 Jul 2004 13:10:00 GMT
So apparently Eric is trying to get people onto LiveJournal, which
is sort of like trying to get people to be on the Jerry Springer
show. And I wasn’t really interested in getting involved, but
Schlake’s been trying to piss Eric off on LiveJournal, and I’ve always
kind of wanted to take a few pot-shots at Schlake, so I’ve posted some
nasty stuff in the Eric-blog.
Right after I was about to give up on my boys, Jarrod and Bill
decided they would swing by on Labor Day or the Sunday before, just to
shoot the shit and maybe sleep on the floor. So I feel much better.
I’m sure I don’t wander into their thoughts as often as they wander
into mine, but that’s probably a function of how few friends I have
here. Not that I’m complaining…it’s nice to have such a simple
life. Then again, I don’t get much contact with people other than
Michael and Alex, and that’s probably going to get weird in the long
run, or else Alex will learn a lot about programming.
Alex and I were in Santa Fe today to go to the Women’s Health
Clinic, so we wound up eating at a nice New Mexican cuisine restaurant
with Hillary afterwards. The clinic appointment didn’t go as we had
expected—there are three questions which determine whether a
person is eligible or not, but apparently it wasn’t possible for the
woman to ask us all three over the phone before we showed up. So
there we were and she won’t be eligible for another month. I wanted
to just get the appointment done, but Alex doesn’t want to waste
(effectively) $135 on a doctor’s visit, because it would be $150 today
or $15 after she gets coverage. I guess this is reasonable, because
she is basically healthy though she seems to have mono, but mostly I
don’t want to fight about it anymore. I’m glad if she gets in and
does it at all.
Now, I’m not opposed to people in our state speaking Spanish at
home, or being bilingual. It’s never been an issue, living in
Albuquerque or Socorro. Apparently, and this makes no sense to
me whatsoever, there are more people who only speak Spanish in the
northern half of our state than in the southern half. I guess this
corroborates my statement to outsiders that, no, you fucks, New
Mexicans aren’t Mexican, because if that were true, it would be a
gradient towards Mexico rather than away from Mexico. But I’m also
sort of more generally offended by it because I don’t like it when I’m
standing in a Wal-Mart 500 miles from the border and they’re speaking
over the intercom in Spanish. I also don’t like that half the time
someone I don’t know speaks to me, they’re doing it in either broken
English or Spanish which I don’t really know.
Now, Matterform Media is located at the Johnson Controls building,
which used to be basically a small business complex but was purchased
by NNMU, so now we’re one of three rooms that aren’t classes. We also
are the room which heats up the most, so we have to have our door open
or we’ll bake. This combination leads to particularly amazing levels
of stupidity when we have random fucks walking in wanting information.
We’ve had about six people ask us what happened to their class, and
five fucks came in saying that someone told them to come to the office
and talk to the lady about the form. We say, we have no idea what
you’re talking about, we’re not part of the school or the government
we’re a small business. 95% of the time, they then reply with
something like “Yes, but could you help me? I need to talk to
the person about the thing, but I can’t express to you verbally who
they’re affiliated with, if they’re government or school, I just need
to do this thing that I don’t know what is or how or anything really,
and plus I don’t know English so if you try and help me I won’t know
what you’re trying to say, so basically I just want you to make it all
better so I can go home and blame it on the man at the office at the
building who said it was all better so goddamn it, it’s your fault now
not mine.” Sorry. We don’t speak your language. If we charged
a dollar per question, we’d have made at least $10 right now, and we
could afford to go out to lunch or something.
Alex and I watched a really cool movie today called Uzumaki. It’s
a Japanese horror flick; we’ve gotten really into Japanese horror
because it seems to be where all the atmospheric, good horror is these
days. We got this movie on Amazon on the strength of the review. It
was the first movie from the director of the fucking awesome Tomie:
Replay (though he apparently also did the original Tomie
movie, and it sucked so badly someone wrote a hilarious review of it
on Amazon that I’d link to if I weren’t on dialup and downloading
something right now). Great movie, very campy, almost no blood or
violence but still amazingly effective. Good Lovecraftian decrepit
ancient town with evil pagan history, too.
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Sat, 03 Jul 2004 12:51:00 GMT
Last night, Alex, Faust, Hillary and I watched The Last Samurai. I
must admit, I didn’t manage to remain completely aware of what was happening
through the whole thing, because I was sort of tired from the day, but what I
did catch was quite good and I think I can safely recommend the movie.
The movie is a drama about the exploits of a former army captain under
Custer’s command. He’s an alcoholic who hates his life because of the things
he has done in the service of the government. He is hired by the Japanese
government to squash a rebellion on the strength of his record with this kind
of thing.
It seemed like a good movie for what I caught, and I definitely intend to
catch it again before giving it the buck rating. Definitely has some
heartstring tugging scenes, and it’s noteworthy for taking a character so
hatable and making him respectable, perhaps admirable. And of course, there
are so many nipponiphiles around that will love it nothing more need be
said.
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Fri, 02 Jul 2004 12:53:00 GMT
Today was my first day at work. I signed some paperwork including
an NDA and a non-compete (which I was expecting I suppose) and all
that. Then I got to work on some websites, but no real code. We’re
still talking about what I’m going to implement first.
For lunch, Michael took me out to some place I think called
Joann’s, where I damn near burned my mouth and had a huge meal I
wasn’t able to finish. For dinner, Bill took me out to Bumble Bee’s
Baja Grill here in Santa Fe, where I am crashing until I get to move
into the new apartment. Both meals were awesome; I really enjoy
having good places to eat at, especially good new places.
Around 5pm, Michael got a call at work for some kind of mortgage
company. He put them on speakerphone and waited for a human to offer
to help him, then he offered them penis enlargement pills. They hung
up immediately. Apparently he hates spam. :)
I’m zonked, so I’m going to bed now even though it’s early. :)
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Posted by Daniel Lyons
Thu, 01 Jul 2004 11:11:00 GMT
Today we headed back up to Española to look for a place to
live again. To rehash the last one: Española is a dump, at
least with respect to housing, though ironically the best housing is
reserved for Section 8 folk on fixed or low income. We had made two
appointments with two separate women wanting $500 for their 2 bedroom
adobe abodes.
The first one, I remarked on the way out, was like the bastard
child of the other two houses we had seen. It had uneven floors, but
wasn’t a fishbowl; it had ratty furniture included, but no washer and
dryer; it had concrete steps which Alex loathed, but no the terrible
neighborhood. Alex would have been satisfied with it, but there isn’t
much I hate in this life more than uneven floor. I’m not the best on
my feet and I really dislike it when I have to think to maintain my
already feeble balance.
So we were at an impasse—Alex wouldn’t budge on her hatred of
the fishbowl, and I wouldn’t budge on my hatred of bad floor. We
stopped at Blake’s and got the phone book, ostensibly to locate a
T-Mobile authorized fuckz0r. On a whim we decided to check the
apartments section since it seemed to be a newer book, and found a
place called Butterfly Spings in Pojoaque. Alex called and though
they didn’t have a two bedroom available immediately, we decided to
head out there before seeing our 5 O’clock about whatever decrepit
adobe shanty she was blessing with the presumptous title of
“house.”
We got lost on the way in and wound up confused, on the wrong side
of the road, nervous because it is also a storage unit. We called the
old man back and he called our attention to the massively unmissable
apartment complex just a few rows of housing behind the main drag.
Sandwiched between two Route 66 gas stations, a Dairy Queen and a
casino, I wouldn’t think of it as a beautiful area, but it’s very
sparsely populated and there’s lots of undeveloped land in the area
which is very pleasing to the eye.
We came in and spoke to the man, who lives out of one of the units
where he does business; he is apparently the owner as well as manager
but was amicable to us and the other two people he dealt with. He has
a 2 bedroom 2 bath opening up either on the second or the tenth, and
our destiny lies there. We filled out the paperwork and we have a new
apartment. We also skipped out on our 5 O’clock (it was about 5:45
when we made it out of the complex). If you factor in the old man we
skipped out on on Monday, we have sort of a bad habit of calling
people and not showing up.
We also find it really annoying that nobody in Española is
willing to just give the damn directions to their place. Getting a
place in Española is sort of like this:
- Call bitches. They aren’t home. Wait until 7 to call.
- Bitches still don’t pick up. Leave a message.
- Bitches call you back, but don’t want to talk on the phone for
more than 2 minutes or give you their address. Make arrangements
to call bitches when 30 minutes from Española.
- Call bitches from 30 minutes outside town. Bitches say
“thanks; call us from Qwik Stop” and give directions to
Qwik Stop.
- Make it to Qwik Stop; call bitches. Bitches say great, will be
there in 3 minutes.
- Fifteen minutes later, bitches show up. Drive 20 miles over
speed limit to shack with “To Be Condemned” sign over
top.
- Bitches explain how one heater is sufficient for entire house
in winter, how neighborhood is good in spite of massive crime, how
no A/C is necessary in spite of location in Sunny New Mexico, how
former residents jimmy open storage doors, etc.
- Pretend to look interested by opening cabinets, fridge doors,
asking inane questions, even though you made up your mind as soon
as you saw the chipped exterior, sloped floor, and general malaise
that goes hand-in-hand with this level of decay.
- Tell bitches you’ll call them after your next appointment if
you want to go with it and that you really like their place. It’s
a bald-faced lie, but they already lied to you when they called
their place livable.
So tomorrow I head up to Bill’s place with a change of clothes and
some food money, my keyboard and my laptop, and I start work at 9 AM.
I can’t wait but I am tired as hell from all the driving these past
two days. It will be an interesting commute from Santa Fe for these
next few weeks.
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