oh, hello.
well it's easter weekend and alayna's back home down south, so it's a rare loner weekend for me. i'm not complaining, i'd hate for it to be like that every weekend, but now and then doesn't hurt i guess.
long fuckin week at work though. between a few physical therapy sessions (almost done, shins go back and forth between hurting and not) and a couple trips to airports, along with the requisite 40 hours of work, i feel like i earned my weekend.
i've only ever worked around march/easter back in 2000, so i wasn't really expecting everybody in the fuckin world to be taking good friday off... that made the afternoon go even slower.
we went and saw the ring two thursday night. imdb has it at a shockingly low 5.1, and the saddest part is that i think i completely agree with that rating. maybe a generous 6, but still. not entirely sure why, just didn't have the "magic" the first one had. this one was too cheesy and formulaic to really be all that scary in the same kinda way the original one was. seemed to me like another movie that could have done without a sequel. hopefully i won't hear anything of a 3rd in the works, there's enough horror movies on the horizon already. i should know, they showed previews for 'em all before the ring two.
we've found that kelsey grammer's the sketch show on fox is actually pretty funny. i'd highly recommend grabbing the torrent of the first 2 eps and appreciate its short-and-sweet humor. i watched that first ep of the US version of the office, and it's about as mediocre as i'd figured. it could have maybe some potential if given a chance, but something tells me the show's concept just ain't gonna work on this side of the pond. i won't be surprised if it's belly-up after 6 episodes or something.
i'll use that to launch into a quick aside where i wonder aloud what the hell ever happend to nbc. back in the mid/late-90s, nbc was basically *the* network. thursday nights were amazing, friends, then a typically good show at 7:30, followed by seinfeld, then usually a crummy show at 8:30, then ER at 9pm. in my opinion, go back and look at '95-96, for instance:
Friends
The Single Guy
Seinfeld
Caroline in the City
ER
at least to me, that's when thursday nights i wouldn't think of watching anything else. now, besides scrubs and ER, what does nbc have? it's funny how fox is even considered a better network than them now, and to me arrested development, the sketch show, simpsons and king of the hill all prolly prove that fox actually is the stronger network.
i know i've mentioned it before, but it suddenly dawned on me earlier today that i think it had probably been 2-3 weeks since i last actually sat in front of the tv and just flipped around the channels or watched something other than one of my mainstays live. kinda makes me wonder about my stupid almost-$60 directv bill, that's for sure. i guess as far as what i do at night when i've got some free time, i don't seem to ever just sit and blankly watch tv. i'm either surfing or doing something semi-constructive on my pc's, catching up on some shows thru tivo or catching up on some shows that i downloaded.
and speaking of catching up, time to sleep without the alarm set. see ya in a few days.
--j
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Friday, March 18, 2005
hey, sorry i've been pretty busy at work lately and too lazy to post at night...
quick stream of consciousness random thought, cuz it just happened to me -- have you ever had a real quick impromptu handshake that just went horribly? i'm calling this one the "thumbless handshake" cuz it was one of those where me and this dude up at work shook hands quickly as i was sitting in my cube and our thumbs just got stuck on the wrong side. you really don't realize how important interlocking thumbs are to a handshake until your thumb is in the wrong place during one. standard operating procedure during a thumbless handshake: quickly look away and pretend it didn't happen.
a random rant... y'know how everybody and their mother hates typical every email spam? i've come to realize there's such a thing as work spam even. not advertising chicks & horses or viagra or anything, just shit you don't care about. i dunno how it is at most companies, but at mine the ratio of mass shit to productive communication has got to be like 10-to-1. there are so many emails that like 8000 people at one time receive, it's pretty amazing. and they're usually stuff that maybe 1% of 'em need to know, like "this weekend from 2-3am sunday power will be turned off in wing D of the mckinney site." between that and the secretaries that send out pointless nuggets of info to 300 people at a time, our inboxes just get so damn cluttered with crap it's amazing. just think it's funny that we have to spend so much time just organizing our emails, almost seems to defeat the purpose.
what's funny is that in 2 months i'll have been out of college for a year, and yet i still can't sleep like a normal human worth a damn. i kinda always thought your ability to sleep properly depends on your environment, but i dunno. i've gotten pretty bad (well, i mean i say bad cuz it doesn't match the majority of the american workforce) about not being able to bother getting into work real early. back when i first started i showed up at 8am everyday without really asking any questions, but then i just started to slip. i had everyday meetings i was supposed to go to, which i did for a while, but now i hardly ever show up, mostly cuz nobody really seems to need me in there. it's nothing personal, they just don't need somebody with my particular job to participate in what they're talking about. in hindsight, i now see that it was the 8am meetings that motivated me to get out of bed.
now it's kinda like i just sorta roll into work when i feel like it, which... oddly doesn't really phase anybody, which makes it kinda hard to stop. i'd say on average i show up at like 9:30, then standard 8 hour day without a lengthy lunch i'll just work till 5:30 or 6ish and hit the gym or home. as a company, we don't have a policy of showing up at a certain time or anything, basically just that you should try to work in relatively daylight hours, heh. if other people were waiting for me to get there to do their work, it's not like i'd get there any later than anybody else. but since that's not really the case, it's hard to feel all that guilty when you get the same amount of work done from 10-6 as you do from 8-4.
it's even gotten to the point where i can't really even be bothered to like dress up at all for work. not really for lack of trying either -- i'll put out like some khakis and a dress shirt now and then to iron and wear the next day... but i never really end up ironing and wearing them. the closest i'll get is to wear a button-down shirt tucked in with jeans, and that's pretty much it.
i think part of the problem is that there's a certain stigma with being an average drone at a big company. anybody would assume somebody in my position would just feel lucky to wear jeans on friday. but i think it depends more on the environment, and probably 75% of the people i work with wear jeans everyday without question. it's one of those situations where everybody i work with likes to kid around with me, just like i kid around with them, so if i dress up more than usual you can expect to hear shit from somebody.
i kinda like and hate it at the same time. there's something to be said for a good looking guy that just dresses nice, like you feel like you should respect him more or something. and you can tell when people are impressed by how you look, and it'll give you that little boost of confidence. but then the problem with dressing up a bit is that you (or at least i) just feel kinda rigid all day. as good as you may look, you can't be really all that comfortable in a freshly-pressed button-down long sleeved shirt with khakis and dressy shoes. it's sorta like you're not strictly uncomfortable, but you're not comfortable either.
i don't get up and tap dance for anybody in my job. i write and maintain code for a living. it's what i'm good at, it's what i like doing, it makes sense to do it and be paid for it. i don't really see the point in overglorifying it i guess, like i spend so much time sitting at a PC and writing and testing software, there's nothing in that that would require looking ridiculously professional. so lately i typically end up wearing some decent hip shirt with 1 of the 3 (yes, 3) pairs of jeans i like with my diesel shoes, that's an average day's dress for me. of course it's not uncommon for me to go 2 weeks without shaving at all, and several months without a haircut.
i kinda love that though i guess. i don't like when people trump up their job to being more important than it is by putting so much importance into the way you dress and when you show up to work. i guess that's one of the biggest parts of why i've kinda come to enjoy the job i've ended up with. as long as i'm busy up there (as i have been for '05 basically) and i have that kind of flexibility, going to work everyday doesn't really feel like a battle.
--j
quick stream of consciousness random thought, cuz it just happened to me -- have you ever had a real quick impromptu handshake that just went horribly? i'm calling this one the "thumbless handshake" cuz it was one of those where me and this dude up at work shook hands quickly as i was sitting in my cube and our thumbs just got stuck on the wrong side. you really don't realize how important interlocking thumbs are to a handshake until your thumb is in the wrong place during one. standard operating procedure during a thumbless handshake: quickly look away and pretend it didn't happen.
a random rant... y'know how everybody and their mother hates typical every email spam? i've come to realize there's such a thing as work spam even. not advertising chicks & horses or viagra or anything, just shit you don't care about. i dunno how it is at most companies, but at mine the ratio of mass shit to productive communication has got to be like 10-to-1. there are so many emails that like 8000 people at one time receive, it's pretty amazing. and they're usually stuff that maybe 1% of 'em need to know, like "this weekend from 2-3am sunday power will be turned off in wing D of the mckinney site." between that and the secretaries that send out pointless nuggets of info to 300 people at a time, our inboxes just get so damn cluttered with crap it's amazing. just think it's funny that we have to spend so much time just organizing our emails, almost seems to defeat the purpose.
what's funny is that in 2 months i'll have been out of college for a year, and yet i still can't sleep like a normal human worth a damn. i kinda always thought your ability to sleep properly depends on your environment, but i dunno. i've gotten pretty bad (well, i mean i say bad cuz it doesn't match the majority of the american workforce) about not being able to bother getting into work real early. back when i first started i showed up at 8am everyday without really asking any questions, but then i just started to slip. i had everyday meetings i was supposed to go to, which i did for a while, but now i hardly ever show up, mostly cuz nobody really seems to need me in there. it's nothing personal, they just don't need somebody with my particular job to participate in what they're talking about. in hindsight, i now see that it was the 8am meetings that motivated me to get out of bed.
now it's kinda like i just sorta roll into work when i feel like it, which... oddly doesn't really phase anybody, which makes it kinda hard to stop. i'd say on average i show up at like 9:30, then standard 8 hour day without a lengthy lunch i'll just work till 5:30 or 6ish and hit the gym or home. as a company, we don't have a policy of showing up at a certain time or anything, basically just that you should try to work in relatively daylight hours, heh. if other people were waiting for me to get there to do their work, it's not like i'd get there any later than anybody else. but since that's not really the case, it's hard to feel all that guilty when you get the same amount of work done from 10-6 as you do from 8-4.
it's even gotten to the point where i can't really even be bothered to like dress up at all for work. not really for lack of trying either -- i'll put out like some khakis and a dress shirt now and then to iron and wear the next day... but i never really end up ironing and wearing them. the closest i'll get is to wear a button-down shirt tucked in with jeans, and that's pretty much it.
i think part of the problem is that there's a certain stigma with being an average drone at a big company. anybody would assume somebody in my position would just feel lucky to wear jeans on friday. but i think it depends more on the environment, and probably 75% of the people i work with wear jeans everyday without question. it's one of those situations where everybody i work with likes to kid around with me, just like i kid around with them, so if i dress up more than usual you can expect to hear shit from somebody.
i kinda like and hate it at the same time. there's something to be said for a good looking guy that just dresses nice, like you feel like you should respect him more or something. and you can tell when people are impressed by how you look, and it'll give you that little boost of confidence. but then the problem with dressing up a bit is that you (or at least i) just feel kinda rigid all day. as good as you may look, you can't be really all that comfortable in a freshly-pressed button-down long sleeved shirt with khakis and dressy shoes. it's sorta like you're not strictly uncomfortable, but you're not comfortable either.
i don't get up and tap dance for anybody in my job. i write and maintain code for a living. it's what i'm good at, it's what i like doing, it makes sense to do it and be paid for it. i don't really see the point in overglorifying it i guess, like i spend so much time sitting at a PC and writing and testing software, there's nothing in that that would require looking ridiculously professional. so lately i typically end up wearing some decent hip shirt with 1 of the 3 (yes, 3) pairs of jeans i like with my diesel shoes, that's an average day's dress for me. of course it's not uncommon for me to go 2 weeks without shaving at all, and several months without a haircut.
i kinda love that though i guess. i don't like when people trump up their job to being more important than it is by putting so much importance into the way you dress and when you show up to work. i guess that's one of the biggest parts of why i've kinda come to enjoy the job i've ended up with. as long as i'm busy up there (as i have been for '05 basically) and i have that kind of flexibility, going to work everyday doesn't really feel like a battle.
--j
Friday, March 04, 2005
it's a typical slow friday afternoon up at work, so i felt like i could blow some time with posting.
fridays are just weird here. i mean i dunno how unlike other jobs our fridays may be, but they're completely different from every other day of the week. it has to be like at least 2/3 of the employees are gone by noon, cuz most of our folks are guys in their 50's and shit that typically work 9-10 hours a day, so they're up on hours by friday and don't stick around very long, if they come in at all. so basically you're left with all the young folks who don't bother to work much more than 8 hours everyday and the really important management types that can't afford to take a day off.
everybody's dressed down, in jeans. i pretty much wear jeans everyday so i typically go the extra mile and wear a hoodie or t-shirt to be extra casual, heh.
i don't think i've ever really seen anything monumental get done on a friday. if something did, it prolly wasn't me that did it, that's for sure. especially on a day like this where most of the people i work with aren't even here, so what good does it do me to do a bunch of work that won't even be noticed immediately anyway?
it's funny having a job where some days you can come in and 8 hours later you literally haven't talked to anybody. that's kind of the problem with working in a big giant corporate defense company, everybody's just too strict. i mean sure some days we can goof around some like any job, but it's not really all that social up here, which is kinda depressing at times.
i think that's why i take my own personal music organization pretty seriously. cuz on average i prolly spend 5-6 hours of everyday with headphones on, kinda keeps me from going crazy. in some ways it's kind fun to rip some cd's the night before and play them the next day, sorta rediscovering a forgotten album or something.
it's a double-edged sword, cuz you wanna be here cuz you can get away with not working your ass off, but you don't wanna be here cuz it feels kinda lame being here when nobody else is, heh. and with how shitty i am at getting here properly everyday, i get stuck being here later than everybody else. it's a work-in-progress, i guess.
let the weekend begin.
--j
fridays are just weird here. i mean i dunno how unlike other jobs our fridays may be, but they're completely different from every other day of the week. it has to be like at least 2/3 of the employees are gone by noon, cuz most of our folks are guys in their 50's and shit that typically work 9-10 hours a day, so they're up on hours by friday and don't stick around very long, if they come in at all. so basically you're left with all the young folks who don't bother to work much more than 8 hours everyday and the really important management types that can't afford to take a day off.
everybody's dressed down, in jeans. i pretty much wear jeans everyday so i typically go the extra mile and wear a hoodie or t-shirt to be extra casual, heh.
i don't think i've ever really seen anything monumental get done on a friday. if something did, it prolly wasn't me that did it, that's for sure. especially on a day like this where most of the people i work with aren't even here, so what good does it do me to do a bunch of work that won't even be noticed immediately anyway?
it's funny having a job where some days you can come in and 8 hours later you literally haven't talked to anybody. that's kind of the problem with working in a big giant corporate defense company, everybody's just too strict. i mean sure some days we can goof around some like any job, but it's not really all that social up here, which is kinda depressing at times.
i think that's why i take my own personal music organization pretty seriously. cuz on average i prolly spend 5-6 hours of everyday with headphones on, kinda keeps me from going crazy. in some ways it's kind fun to rip some cd's the night before and play them the next day, sorta rediscovering a forgotten album or something.
it's a double-edged sword, cuz you wanna be here cuz you can get away with not working your ass off, but you don't wanna be here cuz it feels kinda lame being here when nobody else is, heh. and with how shitty i am at getting here properly everyday, i get stuck being here later than everybody else. it's a work-in-progress, i guess.
let the weekend begin.
--j
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
wow, 2 whole posts in february, huh? i know you're saying, "justin, where do YOU find the time?!"
so, sheeeeit, what have i been doing... finally hit up the doctor, basic gist is that i won't be running for the next month, and prolly won't be running the 5k in may. oh well, ain't quite ready for that one yet.
alayna and i finally got our ipod shuffles shipped from amazon. only problem is they don't have the armbands in stock yet, so we can't work out with them. they're smaller than i expected, and about as simple as you'd imagine. it's weird not having a screen at all, but if you're using it while working out, i don't see why it's gonna matter. interested to see how well the stock headphones work out, kinda concerned about the cord being too long. i don't really care about sound quality while working out, just don't wanna get all tangled up and look like an idiot.
finally saw napoleon dynamite the other day. it wasn't all that clever or anything, but a few of the scenes had us laughing. it was only 85 minutes long, but i couldn't completely blame alayna for losing interest with 20 minutes to go. the movie had a few funny parts, but no plot worth caring about at all. imdb's 7.2 is quite generous.
i'm convinced lately that sony has no idea what they're doing. they're gonna release this Hi-MD Photo, and i have no idea why. why would you wanna put photos on a Hi-MD? the only other thing you could put Hi-MDs in is a Hi-MD player.
apple's ipod photos have been selling well. those are almost equally pointless, but the difference is ipods can be mounted as removable drives, so it's really just like storing some photos on a USB drive. myself, i still don't entirely see the need to have my photos handy to show anyone at any given moment, but i guess i can see the use for it. hell, i've even done that on my pda before.
i gotta reboot my pc for something, so i'll leave it at that. i'll post later if i have the inclination, heh.
--j
so, sheeeeit, what have i been doing... finally hit up the doctor, basic gist is that i won't be running for the next month, and prolly won't be running the 5k in may. oh well, ain't quite ready for that one yet.
alayna and i finally got our ipod shuffles shipped from amazon. only problem is they don't have the armbands in stock yet, so we can't work out with them. they're smaller than i expected, and about as simple as you'd imagine. it's weird not having a screen at all, but if you're using it while working out, i don't see why it's gonna matter. interested to see how well the stock headphones work out, kinda concerned about the cord being too long. i don't really care about sound quality while working out, just don't wanna get all tangled up and look like an idiot.
finally saw napoleon dynamite the other day. it wasn't all that clever or anything, but a few of the scenes had us laughing. it was only 85 minutes long, but i couldn't completely blame alayna for losing interest with 20 minutes to go. the movie had a few funny parts, but no plot worth caring about at all. imdb's 7.2 is quite generous.
i'm convinced lately that sony has no idea what they're doing. they're gonna release this Hi-MD Photo, and i have no idea why. why would you wanna put photos on a Hi-MD? the only other thing you could put Hi-MDs in is a Hi-MD player.
apple's ipod photos have been selling well. those are almost equally pointless, but the difference is ipods can be mounted as removable drives, so it's really just like storing some photos on a USB drive. myself, i still don't entirely see the need to have my photos handy to show anyone at any given moment, but i guess i can see the use for it. hell, i've even done that on my pda before.
i gotta reboot my pc for something, so i'll leave it at that. i'll post later if i have the inclination, heh.
--j
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