The Four-color Relief Map of the Universe

Mark

2008-08-27T03:09:00.001-04:00

Once, I had a theory that people with tattoos were somewhat boring on the inside, and that is why so much time is spent making the outside look pretty. I have met some people that have changed my mind.

Of course, that is a judgment based on some experience. A fair number of the people I have met who have tattoos were more or less identical in personality, at least that was what I thought. It turns out I really didn't know these people intimately (nor would I want to, however) and that prevented me from truly knowing their personality.

Superficially, these folks were similar. I can't speak with detail about people with whom I no longer associate, but new and old friends have shown me that my theory is unprovable at best. So, I am happy with that. I've met someone recently who is quite well adorned, intelligent, and exciting, someone interesting on the inside and out. Still, others I've met lack an interesting personality, perhaps the art speaks where the charisma is silent.

I'm still not getting one, however.

Cookies

2008-08-26T00:28:00.000-04:00

Meeting someone new is always exciting for me, a sort of catharsis of the old, familiar, and unpleasant feelings and a wash of revitalizing freshness. There is nothing quite like the feeling of forgetting the old pain and looking toward a new direction, free from tension and heartache.

It's odd how people meet people in my adult life. I am just old enough to remember the days before the Internet really took off, and how meeting people meant getting up and going somewhere. I like the new(er) way.

Of course if one gets caught in the moment, and forgets to ask important questions, the answers are a message away. I love being able to communicate at will, leaving and receiving messages, it adds flavor and subtlety to any relationship.

The Pain of Friends

2008-08-25T19:12:00.001-04:00

Over my adult life, as I have dated women, I have been asked why I've been so kind to those who have broken my heart. I mention my adult life because I do not qualify most of my twenties (or others' for that matter) as very adult vis-à-vis relationships.

So, as to the question of why I am nice to people who have broken my heart, the answer is simple. I am not angry, and I don't hate. There is no more place in my life for that sort of intense emotion, I can't let those things consume me anymore. It is a person of defective mind and weak heart who allows that to engulf them, and I have neither.

What I feel toward people who hurt me is something different altogether. I feel compassion and kindness, and something else. I will always be there for a person unless the depth and severity of the wound is so that I simply can't, but it takes a lot, more than I have experienced in perhaps twenty years.

I believe people are fundamentally okay but perhaps lost in some way. I know I have certainly been lost for a portion of my life, and I know the feeling and the way. Years ago I found myself, and it's taken a little longer to acquiesce to the demands of me, ergo the divorce.

Some have questioned my motive as ulterior. In the sense that it gives me pleasure and soul satisfaction to help those who have harmed me, yes I believe it is ulterior. However, I have no master plan. Perhaps, as some have suggested, I am a fool. But I have people now who are friends that hurt me deeply, and who are continually amazed that I still want anything to do with them even though their lives have changed dramatically. I feel substantiated, redeemed, and honored to have been with them during their changes.

Running to Something

2008-08-25T06:09:00.000-04:00

I will never stop being amazed at the resiliency of my body.

After not having run for over a year due to foot problems associated with my weight, gout, and arthritis in my feet, I ran this morning and managed a mile and a half at a good pace without stopping.

This is something I am proud of, especially because in the last year I gained probably 40 lbs, which I have since lost and more. I have attempted to run at my high weight, but usually stopped partway down the block because it was simply too painful.

Now I have not had any foot issues in well over a year. I have not needed a cane nor have I needed to take any of the various gout medicines out there (colchisene, indomethacin, allopurinol) but running on my feet with the weight I had put too much pressure on my feet to run at all. I could walk ok, though sometimes I felt as though something might be creeping up, only to disappear the next day.

One reason I stopped drinking much at all (not that I drank much to start) was because I would suffer an attack usually after drinking a bit. It was consistent enough that I stopped drinking completely for well over a year, changed my diet to include more fruits and vegetables and less meats. I also started drinking prodigious amounts of water with the idea that if I flushed my system enough with water it would flush out the purines that caused the gout to start.

So, yesterday was a good day, today is a better day. I look forward to entering races to keep my motivation up. I told someone recently that I would start running and entering races to keep her company. I meant it, but now it's for me.

Help

2008-08-24T22:38:00.001-04:00

I don't tell them often enough, but I am so thankful for my friends, who help me through extremely rough times, sometimes kicking my ass and waking me up, other times soothing me while I cry on their shoulders. You have my gratitude.

Lately, Holly has been there for me. She is an amazing woman, and I am grateful that despite the things I have done, she is compassionate and kind to me. Our relationship really is more solid now than I can remember. Without her, I would be miserable.

Crystal has shown me a lot of things as well. She has made so many major changes in her life that she is unrecognizable from the person I met long ago. She has experienced many of the same emotions and issues that challenge me today, and is a source of strength and advice that I appreciate greatly.

My daughter, while not my friend, has brought me back so many times by just being Emily. What a pleasure it is to wake up to her pretty little face screaming "wake up" at nine o'clock! Just to look at her, I feel content, even happy.

Amy and Theresa are old friends I have not spoken to in so many years, yet they selflessly step in to sooth my soul when I feel so broken.

So, I am thankful to all of these people, but most of what I feel about them is very lucky.

Advice

2008-08-22T23:43:00.000-04:00

The struggle to get over someone is long and arduous as everyone who has been successful at it knows. I've read and heard many pieces of advice along the way - don't let them know how you feel, don't show them weakness, don't do this, do that. But I am too old to play games, and this type of advice smacks of game playing.

Even when I initiated the breakup it hurt me, very badly. Once, I broke a relationship off because I saw future - the disrespect in the relationship, the way she just couldn't let some people go, the jealousy, broken promises. There were many, many good times, but I had been through breakups before with her, and I wasn't about to let it happen again.

Sometimes I would think I'd made a mistake, that the things that appeared so serious were not so in comparison to the intensity of the good times. Then I remember the words, the looks given to me. I remember the feeling when I was told that she didn't want someone she broke off with to hurt, that she wanted to be a friend. I remember thinking 'she can't let him go.' also my heart sinking when she said they were going to lunch and talk about things.

Often my thoughts dwelled on the good things - walks on the beach, dinners together, sitting on the porch and talking until late. Even just watching television together was splendid. My heart ached to think of them, to think that I would not experience those again with her. I thought 'if only she could do these things.' If only, again.

So I was in pain, terrible pain. I dealt with it as well as possible, exercise, distraction, self improvement. I flirted with the idea of putting up a front, not letting her know that I was hurting so badly. In the end, it is not a mature way to deal with things. There is no need to hurt the person further by acting as though the relationship, which was magic when it was good, was somehow disposable. Human beings have feelings and need to express them. It is counterproductive to supress those feelings.

So, the advice then is this; hurt. As much as it will hurt, let it hurt. It's going to anyway.

Chocolate

2008-08-22T13:53:00.002-04:00

My Blackberry and alarm clock conspired to wake me up at nine this morning after I'd only had 3.5 hours of sleep, and I was actively reading the urgent messages and listening to the still-active Fay outside my window when I hear a slight knock at my door. It was so slight that I almost did not notice it against the constant movement of the door due to the high winds that blasted us all night.

The door opens, and a naked Emily runs in to my room and up to the love seat, followed by Holly. "Tell daddy," Holly says to her, and before she can say anything I catch the scent of M&Ms candy, a sure sign she has successfully peed in the potty.

"I peed the potty, dayee!" she exclaims, and when I told her she's done a good job and I was proud of her, she repeated "good job" and "I proud a you."

It's an amazing thing to watch someone go from saying absolutely nothing to speaking in complete sentences. I hold her every chance I get, as I am holding her right now. I hope she doesn't pee on me.

Chaos and Water

2008-08-22T01:55:00.003-04:00

Fay is hammering us now. The wind pounds at the windows, blowing rain up into places it does not usually get. It's chaotic and exciting.

Sometimes, I like to go to the beach and just walk around. There is a little place just off A1A where you can park and walk along a short boardwalk and on to the beach, where there are horse trails, nice houses, and lots of people.

Which is why my favorite time to go is the middle of the night. Usually there is not a soul around, and when the sky is clear one can see many, many stars. I have gone out there just to be.

On a night like tonight I think it would be especially interesting to spend time there, the brisk wind blowing the water into foam. I like the disorder of it all.

It's New

2008-08-22T00:27:00.000-04:00

Running back and forth through the house, cursing because the storm kept knocking out power just enough to trigger the circuit breakers on the power strip of Holly's computer, has made me a little sweaty and irritated.

I try not to take it out on anyone, since I could just turn it off and continue the work later, but I want to get it done. Holly needs her computer and I want to see it through, if only the weather would respond to my mental energies in a vain attempt to use The Force to clear the storm.

I was a bit surprised when, as I walked the steps up from my little room, she approached me and gave me a hug, saying "I am glad we can be friends." I am glad too, and I told her so.

Our relationship now is more than what it was when we weren't getting a divorce, for we can talk more openly and honestly about things, we both have more confidence, and for the first time in a long time, I feel respect from her as well as toward her.

Just as importantly, we are friends now. I loved her as a wife before, and though I cared for her, the friendship was missing. Along with a newfound respect there is friendship for her, and I support what she does because I know she needs to do it to be confident in herself, and independent. She needs these things not just for herself, but for Emily too.

Some have questioned why I intend to see her through school, supporting her as much as possible and being involved, and it perplexes me. The objective is not to be hated or to exact revenge through abandonment with this divorce. the goal is to make us better parents, and make ourselves happier. Emily needs her mother and her father, not just one of us. Emily deserves two loving parents who are happy.

But we are getting a divorce. Holly is happy with the new course in her life, and I am happy for her. For me, I have approached life with a clean slate, a new chance to correct the errors in character that fulminated our marriage. I look forward to it with resolve, with gusto.

Rediscovering

2008-08-22T00:21:00.001-04:00

I was in the kitchen, washing a piece of fruit, when two-year-old Emily walked up to me with her arms outstretched. I saw she had been into the remnants of a bag of Doritos her mom had been munching on, and grease with nacho cheese flavoring covered her fingertips. Her little hands were curled back to keep the mess off of me as she wrapped herself around my leg and kissed my hip, then placed her cheek against me, saying "I love you daddy."

Everything blurred as tears welled in my eyes. I picked her up, kissed her bare shoulder and told her I loved her, too. She promptly mimicked me, her sweet words still wisping about my mind. This went on a few times before she laid her head on my shoulder and whispered again "I love you daddy."

I held her there for a litte while, all quiet except for the winds of a passing tropical storm and the rain drumming against the roof. I stood swaying like a pendulum with my little girl, who loves me.

Sticky Time.

2007-12-08T12:52:00.000-05:00

Here at work, we've been getting rid of a lot of hard drives, and so I asked one of the IT guys if I could have the box full of junkers sitting in the cage. "Sure" he says, and fetches me the box.

Now, he was sick once and is really skinny, so I watch him walk in with this big box and I think 'wow, you didn't have to carry it for me.' Only after I tried to move it did I realize that it must have been a major effort, or he is storing muscle for his arms somewhere in his legs or something, because that box was HEAVY.

Now for the last few days I have been collecting magnets on my desk and worrying about something getting hosed from all these things sitting around. That, and I am worried about getting hurt, because (1) I have already been hurt when these things come together and (2) I got my shirt caught in there and almost couldn't get it extracted. I love magnets.

I had one of these really powerful things on my leg yesterday, and I felt something pull to it in my pocket. I felt around in there and realized it was my phone. 'Crap' I thought, but then realized there's nothing really sensitive in my phone.

Later, I go home and try to call my parents. My phone won't work. It does everything except what you really need a phone to do, which is make calls. It turns on, brings up a list of my contacts, plays music, shows pictures, but no phone calls. I swap out the SIM card with an old phone and voila, it works fine.

So, my phone is hosed. Magnets? I dunno, maybe there is something about RF electronics that getting a magnet near fries them.

IT Madness

2007-11-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I bought some new equipment for the Oldsmobile PC that I have. The equipment is newer than my PC can handle, of course.

I bought a new SATA hard disk and controller card because Mrs. Buddy and I are sharing computers to save frustration costs. I can't remember the original justification for having two computers, but I am sure I will remember sooner or later.

So I went to CompUSA this weekend to find an adapter for the 4-pin power connector for this new SATA drive. They had no clue what I was talking about. One of them seemed to recognize that the SATA power connector is different than an ordinary 4-pin EIDE power connector, but then kind of left while his coworker told me that yeah, if I were going to find them they would be on the wall across from us (where I already looked and failed to find it) and that when they get them in they usually disappear pretty fast, and they cost $30 or more.

Now, I knew he was lying because look. I knew it was a waste of my time going in there, but what bothers me is that they get paid to put together computers. So, do they really ever get them in? Does he know for what I am asking?

I also asked about it at my job, where there are a few pretty savvy IT guys around. But none of them really knew what I was talking about either, and one even handed me an adapter that lets you plug an EIDE drive into a SATA cable. I mean, is it really that uncommon a piece of hardware?

So, I ended up getting a new PSU anyway. Eventually I will upgrade the other hardware in the PC and I will need a new PSU to handle it.

I Have Updated.

2007-11-27T03:30:00.000-05:00

Well, here I am, again.

So, maybe this blog post will be about things that annoy me. Like, people who want to be different but are seriously not, or people who say things like "why be normal" or "what is normal anyway?"

I laugh at people a lot. People try so hard to be something that they end up following one crowd or another. Most people remind me of Jean Teasdale.

Tattoos annoy me. I used to want a tattoo, but I grew up. It was bad enough I got an earring. I knew a guy that was close to my age and got a plug in his ear. His goal was to get one of those stupid-looking flesh tunnels. It was sad. I have a theory about most people who modify their outside; they are boring on the inside. That's been the case with most modifyers I have met, anyway.

Boastful people annoy me a great deal. I am not boastful, maybe that's why I never get ahead. Sometimes I wonder if I am boasting about not boasting. It's not that exciting things never happen in my life, but I generally think the exciting things are for me and my close people to know about. I don't like to share because it's nobody's business really, and they don't care anyhow.

I know a guy who, no matter what you say you have done, he's done it better, with more intensity, because that is how he grew up. Lived in a bad neighborhood? His was worse. Just make sure you don't get on his bad side because he is a killer. If he ever caught you stealing even a morsel of old food from the among the dust and grease underneath his refrigerator, he'd shoot you in the brains. He carries an 8 instead of a 9 cuz he can save weight on the quick draw. I roll my eyes a lot around him. I think my theory applies to him as well. I mean, he works in IT for crissake.

It's really late, and our Christmas Ornament Removal System is sleeping with mommy tonight because she apparently has dominion over my side of the bed. It's ok, I know she feels bad because she's getting another tooth to take care of.

Stub

2007-01-20T20:02:00.000-05:00

Baby Buddy is getting bigger. For some reason, I thought she would stay small forever. But she's gone and gotten longer and now she's starting to sit up. Soon she'll be crawling. The week after that she'll be in college (after getting home schooled, of course).

Couple that with how there seems to be no future where I work and hey, things are great!

Mysteries and the Nature of Magic

2006-08-12T10:26:00.001-04:00

I am a father. Nothing more profoud upon my life has ever been uttered by me or anyone else that I have ever known.

I have a beautiful new daughter, Little Buddy. She and Mrs. Buddy are the things that give meaning to my life, and I am so happy these days that I can't imagine how I got along before. People tell me it only gets better, but again, I can't imagine.

Lately the birth of Little Buddy has inspired me to embark on the knowledge quests of old times, that is my old times, things like I used to do. For a while, I stopped looking for things and stopped trying to learn new things in favor of simplifying my life and other such silliness.

I've come to realize now that there is no reason why I cannot have a simple life as well as a lot of money and lots of varied knowledge. Already I can talk on a wide range of topics with the folks at work, so I have a good start. My boss seems adequately impressed that I can keep up with him on whatever he chooses to talk about (unless it's Civil War history) so I think I am good there.

So with my new vision quest comes many an opportunity to visit the library. That coupled with the fact we've eliminated digital cable from our house means we visit the library 4 times a week or more for DVDs, books, and whatever else we can find there. In fact, there is a vast resource that I believe is untouched by a significant number of taxpayers in our city in that many don't know exactly what you can do at the library.

Granted, I have not taken in a lot of the programs that are scheduled at the library, so I don't really know if they are great things or not. I imagine that anyone who is volunteering their time to hold some sort of event at the library will be doing it either out of love of the subject or boredom, so there could be some wide variance there on the quality.

Still, if you're poor like me, free stuff is free stuff.

Disappointment.

2006-04-04T20:26:00.000-04:00

Finding time to post is kind of a difficult task nowadays. First, there was the "24" involvement. Recently, my mother lent us the first season of "24" on DVD, a show which I had never actually sat down to watch until about a month ago, partway through season 5.

So we watched the first season. In five days. Watching one episode was like smoking crack, or what I imagine the addiction of smoking crack to be if it somehow resembled watching a television show. Watching one episode was not enough, and having all the episodes there was instant gratification. No longer did we have to wait for an entire week for a new episode, it was next on the disk.

When one show ended I would look at my pregnant, suffering wife, who would wordlessly nod her assent or denial. We often ended up watching several shows in an evening. I would come home, grab something for dinner or eat what she had already prepared and we would sit in front of the television, DVD remote in shaky hand, ready to feed the addiction. At the end of that we would crawl off to bed until the next day, when I would go to work, come home and repeat the exercise.

Season one led to season two to season three. My mother warned me that season three got a little boring in the middle where Jack and crew were in Mexico, but I liked this part ok. Mrs. Buddy got a little bored with it though.

We finished season three and were ready for more, but we were denied. I knew my mother had all the sets up to season four, but in our relentless mind-rotting we caught up with my parents. They were not finished with season four.

So, we wait. I have no idea whether my mom and dad are finished with it. The newness has worn off a bit and all the seasons have sort of blended into one long show. I can't even really remember what happened when. I may have to go back and watch some previous shows to catch up again. Meanwhile, we record each episode of season five on the DVR. We have five or six now, unwatched until we can get season four.

---

So I think I am getting a promotion at my job. I call it a promotion but it really is more a refinement of what I already do.

I applied for a second level position at the help desk. I already do work that is at or above the second level people who worked there before and do now, so it is not too much a stretch for me to do it permanently.

Now, to know me before i started working at my current job is to know personally an example of someone with a nihilistic attitude toward work. Rather, I did not care about making money for anyone else than myself. In some ways, I still don't. I believe that most people work for companies that bleed dry their talent and ambition, transforming the employee rank and file from excited, caring people to mind-numbed marionettes making the bottom line look better for the executives, who couldn't care a whit about them.

I believe I work for one of those companies. Still, I have retained enough of my pre-enlightened personality that I simply don't take it too seriously, or I try not to. It amuses me when people become so upset at things that happen at the help desk, as if every nuance of the dynamics of the Company computing infrastructure was within our immediate control.

But, I admit to some excitement when I finally thought I found my way up in, if not out of, the level one pit I found myself in. I was one of the first to apply for the position when it opened. I found myself excited at the prospect of finally being paid closer to what I think I should earn, not to mention the challenge of harder problems to solve.

Fuck that.

Sure, the problems are harder sometimes. But I have been doing the level two work unofficially now for over a month. They have not hired me for it, and are not paying me for it, but I am still doing it, "on spec" I call it. I give a little to get a little more.

Trouble is, it ain't all that much more. See, one of the biggest insults to the RaF is the percentage increase. Essentially the Company says "fuck you" to the market and pays you what they think you'll take. Some of us make less than $25,000 a year, some as much as $35,000. So if you make somewhere in there, you can hope for, at most, a seven percent increase above what you make. Never mind paying you what you are worth on the market, you are paid what you are paid because you aren't going anywhere.

Even the "merit increase" is nothing more than a pittance that feels more like a slap in the face given the down talking and patronizing attitudes we endure, the (empty) threats of outsourcing being constantly held in front of us in an attempt by weak-willed middle management, whose fists of mercury scare no one.

---

I once worked at a military contractor that constructed jet engine electronics. This company was slow to move on anything that threatened the health and long-term safety of the people working on the factory floor, but bring a radio in and you could count on a visit from the pit boss.

This place had people who worked the same job for 25 years or more. Twenty-five years assembling electronic parts into a metal case, day in and day out. I can't possibly see how that could be fulfilling, but a look at the people who did that showed me that fulfillment was not a primary concern.

One of the bosses had a sign on their cube wall that indicated exactly how they expected one to feel when working there. I can't remember the exact words, but it was something along the lines of "I feed you, I clothe you, I care for you, who am I? I am YOUR JOB!" That has never failed to scare me shitless.

I like working okay, and I don't even mind working for someone who appreciates hard work and rewards it accordingly. For years and years I have heard of this "work ethic" that people have, people who never miss a day and who strive for excellence in whatever large and small task is given them. Nothing wrong with striving for excellence, but there is a certain feeling of futility and sadness in seeing someone who once had a freshness about them now tired and submissive. To me, work should be a contract between two parties, no matter what size difference appears between either side, and the sole reward should be money. I don't care about what kind of insurance plan a company has. Many times it sucks anyhow. I would rather have more money in my pocket to spend on crappy insurance of my own choosing, if I so choose.

Money is the buffer of a civilization, the thing that separates people from their animalistic past of hunting for food and gathering wood to survive the winter. Trinkets and promises make a poor substitute for that buffer. When you take away my money, you take my power of choice. But, just so you know, I can still make the final decision.

Me Love You Long Time.

2006-03-06T20:14:00.000-05:00

So...it's been a while since I posted anything. Not a whole lot different going on that I really needed to post, the mind has been sort of in stasis lately. Mebbe I should post tonight.

I can't stop eating!

2006-01-16T20:35:00.000-05:00

Back to the keyboard I sit, hoping something witty and wise flows from my fingers. Nothing of the like has been brewing in the noggin lately.

In fact, the most mind-punishing thing I have been contemplating as of late is what to have my new hellspawn call my mother. That, and I have been enumerating what I have to do to get this place baby-safe in seven months. Trouble is, when I start enumerating, there usually follows a buffer overflow then complete lock up, requiring a reboot. Life pops a DoS attack on my brain.

Also, some realizations have been hitting me. I can't swim in the pool naked anymore, nor can I walk around in the back yard doing the dans le nu, nor can I shower in my open air shower. Dammit!

In the course of all the enumerating I also count the things I want to do to improve the place. Things like; digging up the pool and making it rectangular instead of the "renal failure kidney" shape it is now. Honestly the ugly thing takes up the whole back yard and looks like a thousand-year-old alcoholic's liver.

I also want to build a deck, add on another story, tear out and rebuild the back two rooms.

There's a job. The person who lived here when I was living with my parents next door had three kids living with him when some other kids from a previous marriage decided they wanted to live with daddy instead of being beaten and abused by stepdaddy. Go figure. Anyhow, to accomodate the new arrivals, he converted the garage area into two rooms. The only problem...he was neither handy with woodworking tools, nor was he in any way approaching an electrician.

Well so...I have previously removed some of the more egregious insults to the construction gods well before we moved in here, things like the wooden floor covering the utility room concrete. Not that this was a bad idea, just that the incorrect placing of vapor barrier along with the fiberglas insulation placed in the floor joists in addition to the leak next to where he bricked up the back door led to mold, mold, mold.

I was sick for a week after cleaning that out. I love stachybotris.

The attic space above the two rooms is no better. There are bare wires hanging out of work boxes and all kinds of nasty, dangerous things. I am all about safe, organized and easy to maintain electrical work. I have wired buildings for VoIP and ethernet, including my home. I approach it professionally, with the future in mind. So, eventually I want to rip out the wiring and replace it with conduit for each wall, replace the work boxes and also turn the back room into the nerve center of the house. I already wired the main rooms with CAT5e ethernet as well as coax, so the back room will become my main room/lab/server room/game room. I am giving up the large bedroom for my hellspawn. I'm gonna be a great dad!

The Empire is Born.

2005-12-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

Just in time for Christmas we discovered that Mrs. Buddy is pregnant! That is right, you should cower now in hopes that I and my firstborn minions overlook you ensconced in your hiding places, for we shall unleash mighty wrath upon the world!

Hurtling Entropy.

2005-12-18T22:54:00.000-05:00

Today is my birthday.

I don't really have much to say that is witty or funny today. In fact, there hasn't been much to say in the last few weeks. Not that there haven't been developments...there certainly have. Just that the nature of the developments are such that there's not a whole lot to say about them, and I am not supposed to mention what they are until later.

Well, so there you go. Birthday, developments...pretty much sums it up lately. Yea, got denied for another job too. This one I was well qualified for, if not overqualified. I applied for a position as "do-it-all IT person" for a subsidiary of Bigass Bank, Inc. where I work. I lost the job to another person in my department who, while qualified, has neither the technical knowledge nor the experience I have.

I don't feel so bad because she got the job...I think she's great and deserves to do something more challenging than what she does. What I feel bad about is the way the interviewing was handled, or perhaps the lack of interviewing would be more precise.

She was the first person interviewed and got the job the day after her interview. There were over fifty applicants in the first day, and I applied as soon as the position was posted. Now, the real problem is that, since she was the first person interviewed and subsequently got the job, it means they chose her within the first two days of interviewing. I was told by Womanboss (who is her boss, not mine) that the normal interview format was eschewed for an informal chit-chat. Not that they did not have their usual targeted interview questions to ask, they simply decided not to ask them. Evidently, Womanboss heard this directly from her.

All of this is simply speculation that leads me to a reasonable conclusion. They liked what they saw in her and picked the first applicant. Hey, it's their prerogative to do so. My thinking is, though, that if they are the sort of department that hires the first applicant and drops the normal interview format for that applicant, then they either knew her and wanted her, knew of her and wanted her, or were either lazy or desperate. Whatever it is, I don't want to be a part of that department, especially if she was chosen out of laziness or desperation. I have worked for companies that hired me on the spot, not even wanting me to give notice at my other jobs, and those were among the worst jobs I ever had. Usually it was because the department I was in was so disorganized or short staffed that I was overwhelmed and/or undertrained.

I've learned though. I know what I am skilled in and I press it. I learn what jobs I really want and what I don't, and if it seems great but I get a bad feeling in the interview, I decline.

On the upside, since she is vacating an "official" tier 2 position, I am likely a shoo-in for that one. At least, thats what Womanboss tells me.

Stan Williams.

2005-12-17T05:36:00.002-05:00

Convicted murderer who poked fun at how his victims died, showed only enough remorse to make himself look like a victim. He didn't wanna die in the end. Guess he shouldn't have killed those people. Fuck you Stan.

Like a Tiny Piece of Glass in the Thick Skin of Your Heel.

2005-11-27T15:57:00.000-05:00

I was perusing the message boards on IMDB's JFK entry in conjunction with watching a special on JFK's assassination and the theories regarding who was behind it last night when I ran across a discussion between two folks that blossomed into (what seemed) a full on argument between four or more.

I say "seemed" mainly because they could have been the same two people duking it out under different names. Their arguments on either side were very similar in form and structure.

Reading what appears on these boards is frequently an exercise in rhetoric and logic, or rather the novice use of them, and the JFK boards are a fine example of this. There are fallacies aplenty offered on both sides of the opinion fence, and many times the plebian comments appearing here do no credit to one or another side.

**BEGIN REHASH** The next two paragraphs are the only ones I will devote to expressing an opinion on the actual event. Skip them if you don't care.

So, getting to what I think, Oswald was alone in execution but, perhaps, helped with the planning. The only reason I think he may have had even a small measure of help with planning the actual assassination is that he was well known to be sympathetic to Cuba's communist government and its treatment by the United States. To me, even a simple affirmation of "we support you" from Castro's regime would constitute the barest fraction of complicity by them.

In the end it is unimportant why he did it because the argument of those on the JFK boards is that he could not possibly have done it himself. This, to me, is a strong indicator of someone who is on the side of conspiracy and multiple assassins and of someone who would not accept any evidence of anything but multiple assassins.

**END REHASH** You may now read on freely.

It seems a common thread of the really opinionated, woefully untrained people to engage in discussions and pepper them with fallacies. It irritates me almost as much as someone who mistakes loose for lose. It indicates a mind closed to rational discussion and ignorant of the skill necessary to critical thinking. But I am guilty of it too, at times, indicating that it is a skill that must be exercised.

People will often say things during such a discussion as "he could never have managed that himself" or "the Egyptians could never had managed building the pyramids without alien help." This is insulting to me personally as I am a human being who is amazed at what other human beings can accomplish, especially when organized effectively. In my encounters, it's usually the person who is searching for meaning in their own life or who feels some sort of slight or dissatisfaction with their life situation that resorts to mystical causes or conspiritorial speculation. I think it's a desire to be noticed.

Aside from that, there are several other things that irritate me about as much as the title of this post would suggest. So, without further delay, here it is;

Argumentum ad hominem - I really hate it when I am trying to read some board post and someone says "anyone who thinks X is an idiot" or some other nonsense. Makes me stop reading right there.

Appeal to emotion - "That's crazy!"; "Don't be stupid..."; "You're a fool if..."; "you're gonna die if you don't..." Thing like this and others that can be closely associated with ad hominem arguments.

Appeal to authority - while there is no doubt that having studied a subject for a period of time qualifies one to speak a bit more intelligently on that subject, the quality of the commentary is (almost always) directly proportional to the quality of work done when studying that subject.

Have you seen Super Size Me? It's not the best argument against the fast food industry I've heard, but one thing that has always stood out when I watch it is that the doctors predicted first that there would be a slight effect from the consumption of only fast food for a month, and when that was incorrect and there was a significant effect, they predicted that he would not return to normal. The medical consultancy was incorrect on that as well. So, it would seem, at least in their case, that if one were to use these physicians in an appeal to authority argument, it would be folly.

Appeal to n - Essentially, anything other than "appeal to reason".

Non sequitur - For some reason this one really gets me, I think because it shows often that people are lazy, but also that people who are equally lazy buy it as an argument of truth. I mean it can be true but don't use it as a means to get all zealous on me.

Of course, the list of irritations is not limited to logical fallacies. A great many people have lapses in vocabulary that really bother me, or their conversation is comprised of "IM Speak".

loose vs. lose - God that bugs me.

You're vs. your - Yeah.

'puter or puter - Sounds like some sort of disease; "The doctor said I came down with puter when he saw the mess in my pants."

Being (that/a/the, etc.) - Sorry Jenn, we love ya but...stop it :)

Irregardless - Most people mean regardless.

I could care less... - Really? Thanks for that, I think.

Sweet or unsweet? - Ok, I generally consider a place an average to crummy restaurant if you serve sweet tea. It's just one of those personal indicators of crappiness I have. But asking if I want "unsweet" tea is just bizarre. Aside from the fact that "unsweet" consists of the entire set of things that are not sweet (i.e. sour, bitter, etc.), it just sounds wierd.

ME: I'll have some tea please.
SERVER: Sweet or salty?
ME: Ummm...

Someone who relates everything to a movie quote, or who quotes a movie for more than 1-2 seconds - I mean, I remember movie quotes and even long passages of movies that I love. But I don't sit there and attempt to (1) relate to you by reenacting an entire five-minute scene from a crummy movie or (2) be funny by performing someone's entire comedy routine (badly). Hell, it's hard enough to listen to people talk sometimes without having them pretend to be someone else who was not funny.

People who look at you when something funny happens in a movie - I have a friend who, every goddamned time something funny happens in a funny movie (which, if the movie is funny enough, happens often) he stares at me, as if it's not truly funny to him unless he has some sort of confirmation that it was funny. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, damn it irritates me! One day I am going to be in the movies with him, wait for a really funny part and when I see him looking over at me, I will turn suddenly to him and yell "woogie woogie woogie!" really loud while shaking my head.

I know, right? - There is a girl at work who is nice as can be, but every goddamned time someone says something she agrees with (which is often) she exclaims "I know, right?" Hell, she even types it in emails and chats.

Acrosst, dest, and any other time someone replaces a 'k' with a 't' or appends a 't' to a word - Where in the hell did that one come from?

Trying to use a word without at least looking it up in a thesaurus - Now, I understand that some folks think they have a handle on their word usage. But, in the course of my work adventures, I have run acrosst people that try desperately to use a word and either can't say it or have failed to grasp the difference between two words.

I heard a woman once say "it added a little brevity to the situation." Really? How does that happen exactly?

IM Speak - Few things are more irritating to me than reading something written by a teenager steeped in the ways of IM. It's not so much the idea that someone will type "ur" or "u no" to shorten the typing required to get a point across in an IM, it's that these people use this in every written correspondence. Worse, why type something like rilly or noe when the real words "really" and "know" are merely one letter more? The gains by using correct spelling far outweigh the time saved by excluding the letters.

Revenge is a dish best served cold - Ah, the Internet! I have searched high and low for the source of this quotation. Every source I have seen references the "original French" with "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid", attributed to Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Only trouble is, that shit is nowhere to be found in the novel.

I have searched several online editions of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in both English and French for the entire sentence in English and French, parts of the sentence in English and French, and the single word "vengeance" in French, with "revenge" in English. Nothing resembling the quote has appeared in any of the searches.

Now, the problem for me is not that no one seems to know where it came from. Hell, attributing it to the Klingons is fine with me. The real problem is it seems someone said "hey it appears here in this novel" and it was parroted without over the Internet without someone taking the time to actually research it. I even submitted the question to alt.binaries.quotations and got the exact same answer.

Could I be wrong? Is there some forgotten French version of the novel floating out there with the sentence in it? I'd like to know, I'd hate to think absolutely no one has verified it. I don't think I am wrong though. Take a look for yourself, though.

I am guilty of a lot of things that I am convinced irritate others intensely. Usually, I am aware of it and do it because it's a part of my character. I say "dude" a lot. I can remember the very day I started using that word. It was a Wednesday, in 1995, and I was working at a local beer-and-pizza movie theatre, and a friend of mine said it in relation to something that I said. For some reason I though it was really funny used that way, and so it stuck.

I am also a know-it-all. The difference between me and the usual know-it-all is that if I don't know it, I will say so. Sometimes, though, that comes after a little playful bullshitting. There's nothing like giving someone a totally fake explanation that sounds like it's the truth!

There is a guy at work...we'll call him Stork. Stork seems to have a talent for coming in on the tail of a conversation between our whole department and asking the question that was just solved or addressed by that conversation. The man pays no attention to what is said in our public chat. Considering that he's been there longer than I have, I find it utterly amazing that he still remains clueless on the simple details of his job performance. Not to mention he is completely rude to the callers.

So, one day I decide I have had enough of Stork's stupid questions and inane comments.

GROUP: (half-hour long discussion ends with)...so that's the solution to the IE error with the branch users.

(2 minutes later)

STORK: I have a user getting an error in IE. What's that about?

ME (fed up): Man Stork, that's tough. It could be the memory activation unit failing in Windows. I would check that, and also the rasterizer.

STORK: OK, I will check that.

Presumably, Stork now goes to the knowledgebase we all have access to and searches for "rasterizer" and "memory activation unit", finding nothing. Five minutes later...

STORK: How do I check the memory activation unit?

It gets too painful after that.

B Bar Que.

2005-11-14T23:44:00.000-05:00

I made a firepit in the back yard Sunday.

My wife initially laid out the brick in a circular pattern.

"That's about the size I want it" she said.

Of course, a "circular pattern" is not enough for me. It needed to be a circle. I sat for a while, trying out different patterns, and that's when I had the bright idea of using some math to figure out the exact placement of the bricks in a circular firepit.

So I thought a little about what to do. I scribbled some things on a piece of paper, not much...just a rough idea of what I wanted. Each brick is 7.75 inches long, so immediately I knew I had the length of one side of a triangle.

Now, I knew that I was going to make a pattern that would repeat every 90 degrees, so I reasoned that four bricks over 90 degrees should be fine. This means splitting 90 by 4.

That was really the key part in figuring out what I needed. Once I had the division of the angle, everything else fell into place.

So far, my variables are:
a = 7.75
b
theta = (90/4)

So, if I place a peg in the dirt and measure out from the string at a specific measurement, I should have a round pattern. But how much to measure?

So now I could take the equation tan(theta) = a/b and come up with a value for b, which is the length I should measure from the peg.

Now, my variables are:
a = 7.75
b = 18.71
theta = (90/4)

Now I make an angle of (90/4) or 22.5 degrees using a protractor on a piece of cardboard. I cut out this angle and start to lay out my bricks. The first brick starts at about 18.7 inches from the peg at its left side. I lay the next brick down using my angle template, then the next one and so on, making sure the angle is exact. From time to time I also check the measurement along the left side of the brick from the peg. It's perfect.

Soon, I have a perfect circular pattern of 16 bricks upon which I can pile more bricks in an offset but identical pattern. Eventually I have a firepit five bricks tall.

That night, Mrs. Buddy and I sat by the new firepit, fire from the logs stolen from my parents' logpile burning brightly in the masonry circle. We made s'mores and got all smoky smelling. It was great.

Who said you never use math in the real world?

Salt Flats.

2005-11-07T20:16:00.000-05:00

Not a whole lot going on lately. I ground some stumps in my yard. That was a chore, but now there are no stumps. I guess that usually happens when you grind them.

Although, stump grinder is kind of a misleading name. If you have ever seen one of the monster sized grinders you can rent from Lowes or what not, it's more like a stump shredder, with what look like the knobby part of a chicken legbone all around the "cutting" wheel. Basically it pulls the stump apart.

The gout returned in my foot. Yay, it seems like any time I put any sort of strain on it, like standing, kneeling, walking around, grinding stumps, et cetera, it returns. It doesn't get me down anymore though because I know in a couple days it'll be settled down, ready to allow me 2 or 3 weeks of minimal-discomfort light activity. I am gonna weigh 500lbs soon.

I am reworking my network. My firewall PC running Windows 2000 Advanced Server that served me faithfully for 4 years without any sort of maintenance at all, served me by running in my closet without a keyboard, monitor, or mouse without complaint, finally gave up the ghost when I tried to move it.

Poor soul. Evidently, the strain was more than he could bear.

I have a new door! Yay for human technology! My old door obtained a hole, so I had to replace it. I have been sans door for several months. My new door, like my old one, will not stay open since the door frame is crooked. To counteract it, I have placed two powerful neodymium magnets I harvested from some old hard disk drives in a repulsion arrangement on the floor and door respectively. Together they act as a snap, an electrodynamic doorstop that keeps the door open and against the wall. Yay for physics! Fascinating physical phenomena right at my fingertips and I use it to prop open my gimpy door. I can also stick it to the BB in my ear.

Return of the Dog, Aye.

2005-10-30T19:47:00.000-05:00

So, my sister brought the dog back to dinner last sunday night. No one said anything, figuring it might be only one time, and I was never of the opionion that the dog should never be brought over, just that it should be left at home most times.

Tonight, we were over at a friend's house instead of eating with the family. Mrs. Buddy and I agreed that once a week can be too much to take of the family, so every other week for a while would be nice.

I went over to mom's after getting back home since I wanted to find out how things went in our absence.

"Your sister brought that damn dog to dinner again today." mom said.

I feigned shock.

"Really? Oh man!" I faked, trying not to make it obvious.

"Yea, I am going to have to tell her again not to bring it. It was nice when she was leaving her at home."

I just about swallerd my teef.

"I don't want to hurt her feelings about the dog" she continued, " but she brings all the dog toys over and they get all soggy and wet and then the dog tries to put them on me, I just don't like that!"

"Plus, mom, she yells constantly at the animal, which in my opinion is as bad as the dog." I offered. It was not accepted.

"Well no, I just don't like losing my living room to the dog." she lied.

So, all the arguing I did with my parents, actually telling them they need to be the parents and tell their daughter not to burden us with the animal's presence, everything I did was justified at that moment. The only thing that irked me was that she made it seem that the whole idea of telling her was her own plan. I am puzzled at the hesitance to tell her about it. It is almost like she is afraid to be her mom.

But, I don't really care so much about that since the dog will be left, and I will be dry and happy. There will be no scratches on Mrs. Buddy, and I can lay my fat, full body down on the floor after dinner and watch America's Funniest Videos in peace.