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