The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘humor’

Weekly Wacko (33)

What’s a Blog?

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve kept up with my blog (and others that are fantastic – like in the links down and to the right … plus countless others I’ve yet to visit).

The past month I’ve been working every Friday night. How awesome is that? Tonight I tried to throw together a video to show my celebration for the lack of work I was doing, but the film editor on this computer really bugs me so I gave up.

The reason I’ve been working so hard is for a work project I’m involved in. It’s great because I’m learning a lot, and I feel like our product is pretty decent. I’m a software engineer and have been working on the database side of it. One positive/negative note is that I am working with guys my age who are much smarter than me. It’s nice because I’m learning, but not nice because I don’t enjoy feeling dumb.

This week (on Tuesday I believe) we had a meeting with our customer to prep for our final demo. There are ten of us on the team, and I’ve met all but three. Two of the three I haven’t met I’ve recently been working with a lot. We’d get home from work, take a few hours to ourselves (for me that meant Netflix and dinner) and then we’d call in to a conference number and work until midnight or 1 am. It was hellish. As far as I can tell, the other two guys are machines.

Anyhow. At the meeting on Tuesday I saw their pictures for their first time. It was very strange. I realized I had painted a picture of who one guy was – G – who I’d worked with quite a bit since the start of the project (he’s the technical lead, so I got a lot of information/wisdom/subtle chastisement from). It turns out these guys look very different from how I pictured. But more surprising than that was realizing how I had, without realizing it or intending to, pictured them.

On Thursday (5/27/2010) we have our final meeting! Yes! A demo with lots of big wigs – yikes. I’m not going to speak during the meeting, which is nice for the sake of my nerves and mental health. But it’s unfortunate because, had I worked harder and done more of what I set out to do, I think I would be speaking.

Two bright notes: tomorrow I’m going on a canoe trip with two co-workers. Next weekend I’m going to Boston with Theresa! It’s Memorial Day weekend, and I won’t have to work all weekend. A trip is nice, but honestly I’m most excited about the idea of returning to a forty hour work week. Back to my blog, and others!

Here are some random things from the past month.

I tried my first cup of coffee. This was not a desire but a necessity. I have never been as hopped up on caffeine as I was this past month. Newsflash: coffee sucks. Blech. My sister recommended I mix the coffee with hot chocolate (we have a machine at my apartment that serves up both) … I did this and it just made me angry at hot chocolate.  My semi-joke, semi-I’m being serious, line to my mom about this was: “I don’t think it’s the coffee waking me up. I think it’s the terrible taste.”

The lead tech guy, G, while coding at night had two go-to phrases which cracked me up. I’m hard on myself, but this guy is very hard on himself. And it surprises me, because he’s way smarter than me.
Line number one, talking to himself: “What is this, amateur hour?”
Line number two, talking to himself*: “Ohhh … oh!, classic, CLASSIC … classic mistake.”
*He’d also say this to others. But he’s a very nice guy, so he’d qualify that statement with, “I’ve done that hundreds of times.”

During one of the late night coding phone meetings, G had been trying to solve something for a while when he piped up,
“Can we talk about how dumb I am?” (Meaning it was probably a ‘classic’ mistake.)
Silence.
“Um … if you want.” (From the program lead.)

I remember when I worked my first fifty hour work-week in California. I felt a sort of nerd-pride. “Yeah, I worked fifty hours this week … no biggie.”

I can say, now, with that same nerd-pride, that I have now worked a seventy plus hour week. It’s pathetic because that statement actually does bring me pride. But much more than bring it brings me sleepiness.

The customer says, “boom, boom, boom.” It’s a sort of yada, yada, yada – but impatient. He’ll click around and do various things on the website we built and say, “boom, boom, boom” while he describes what’s happening.

Netflix is the devil! But I love it so good.

Oh and I’m not rich. All this overtime is unpaid overtime. Neat, huh?

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Weekly Wacko (32)

Unknown Knowns

You know the line about there being known knowns, known unknowns and then unknown unknowns? Well, unknown knowns are my favorite.

Why?

Because kids are so trusting. Suckers.

I don’t know why I love to be sarcastic with people who don’t know, yet, what sarcasm is – but it’s so much fun. It delights me to no end. Here I’m going to re-create a conversation, to the best of my memory, that I had one day.

A few years back my niece came into my bedroom when I was playing the playstation. She was bored and interested in me playing with her. I was interested in the Madden game I was playing. I decided we’d meet at a middle ground – not play, just talk.

But wait, that’s right, I’m an uncle.

This means I can’t just talk with her, I have to mess with her.

“Did you know you know Chinese?”

“No I don’t!”

She didn’t even bother to have me clarify, “do you mean Cantanese, or Mandarin?” Four year olds are so dumb. (Note: I don’t know how old she was at the time, but it’d ruin my joke line to include that clarification. Like you wouldn’t yell, “FORGET YOU! … Well, not literally forget you, I mean like … you know, forget this particular incident because I’m frustrated with you.”)

(Note: Maybe you would yell that, that’d actually be pretty good.)

“Yeah, you speak Chinese, you just haven’t grown into your brain enough yet to know it.”

“…”

“I’d guess you’ll learn it in a few years. Like one day you’ll just start speaking Chinese.”

“That’s not true.”

“I know! It sounds crazy” (we’ll pretend that I just got an interception, take that opposing team!), “SWEET! … but yeah … you know Chinese.”

“…”

“Fine. Don’t believe me. But you’ll see. I mean, how would you know something’s not true if you haven’t experienced it?”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Come play outside with me!”

“Nah, I’m pretty busy.”

I don’t know how the conversation actually ended. But I DID temporarily convince my niece she would one day tap into some wealth of knowledge she hadn’t used yet – and as part of that she would suddenly speak ‘Chinese.’

*

Another proud uncle moment was when my sister and I taught my nephew the phrase ‘hoochie mama.’ We got him to say it, then when he finally did (it took a while, he seemed uneasy about us – us!, can you believe it?!) we would clap and smile big and yell ‘yay!’ when he would say it. This encouraged him, and soon he was saying it with pride.

Turns out his parental units did not find this nearly as funny as E$ and I did.

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Weekly Wacko (31)

Revelations in Geekdom

Sticking with the trend of announcing that I do online dating – I’m going to announce a few other geeky facts about me. I hid these things from most people, but no more!

Maybe it’s that I work with uber-geeks, so these things almost seem normal to me … but here goes.

In elementary school, grades 3 through 6 actually, my favorite thing was heading to my friend Mike’s house and playing a Star Wars role-playing game (RPG to those in the know). This wasn’t a video game, this was actual dice. HELL YEAH!

Mike’s older brother would sort of MC the event, the ‘dungeon-master’ of sorts (yes, I just said dungeon master). We used Star Wars Micro Machines to set the stage visually. You know, roll the dice, you walk X spaces … move the little guy. Someone looks suspicious, I use my charisma (yep) and manage to find out they’ve got a thermal detonator (that’s right) in a bag. Apparently a Hutt (I went there) has that guy in a bind. Look at that, geekiness.

In fact I remember one night Mike had a group of guys over to spend the night. I was a year younger than Mike so that always made me feel out of place and uncomfortable, so David (the older brother) and I did this RPG game for a chunk of time. I could justify it by thinking, ‘well David was bored, I’m being nice and entertaining him.’ Really I just wanted to play Star Wars, and didn’t want to hang out with Mike’s friends. A win-win.

Seriously, playing that was a blast.

*

A different topic, but still geekdom – I’ve dreamt code.

You see, if I am working on something a lot, and then I go to bed shortly after that – it gets into my dreams. Normally I don’t remember my dreams at all. It’s only if I wake up suddenly that anything occurs to me.

But one night in college, and for a while during this one thing I was working on in California (what a very specific description, huh?) – I dreamt code. It wasn’t anything good, and it didn’t make sense, but I would wake up and have visions of lines of code.

One night I woke up quite suddenly and very vividly this line was in my head: “the answer is k.” That night I dreamt about math equations.

Do you know how terrible it is to dream about math equations, and code?

*

You are yourself, and you expect/hope to be normal – so I think my way of looking at things/thinking is how everyone works. I know now that this isn’t exactly true, but it still is beyond my mind to grasp how other people approach/see/analyze things. However, I really enjoy seeing the differences – which shows my non-engineering side.

My dad is an engineer also (am I technically an engineer? I don’t know. I’m computer science, so take that as you will) – so my family had a joke email file downloaded on our computer. I remember listening to this thing in either middle school or high school. It was a sound byte with a serious sounding man talking to a concerned mother. The mother was concerned about her son’s social skills.

“He has … the knack.”

Actually I was trying to remember this, and I figured ‘why not Google it?’ and wha-la! I found it! Apparently it was from Dilbert. See it here –

I don’t have the take stuff apart/figure out mechanical things really … but I do have the social aspect of it. And, if nothing else tells you I’m geeky, it’s that I found that Dilbert cartoon very funny.

*

I’ll end with this little story. It’s a favorite of my family’s about me.

When I was X years old, I took all of my toys and … what else would an X year old do? I lined them up, in pairs, from biggest to smallest (generally not in size, but still the line was there) starting in my room and heading out to the hall.

I asked my mom to described this, since I don’t remember it, and she said, “oh, that was just the way you played – you were very … methodical. It wasn’t just trucks, it was everything  you had. They all had to line up.”

Also, we had a maid at that time. I apparently got very upset when she messed with my line of trucks/cars. From my mom, “she may not have understood your words – but she understood what you were after.” (i.e. Don’t mess with my line.)

See that? Doomed from a young age.

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