Archive for January, 2009
Saturday, January the 31st, 2009
031 - The War On Clutter
When I first bought my desk, I was so happy.
After all, there was nothing on it.
Ever since then, it’s been a daily struggle keeping my desk, and my room as a whole, clean. A large part of the problem is just having too much stuff. I love buying little things. I’ve said it before, but if something costs between zero and ten dollars, I don’t think very hard about buying it. If something costs between ten and thirty dollars, I will think about it for a few minutes.
How do you think I ended up with over thirty t-shirts? How do you think I ended up with not one, but two “lens adapters” that didn’t fit my camera?
I love the idea of minimalism, of cutting away all unnecessary things from my life and living simply. The thing is, it’s hard being a minimalist when I also have this awesome invention known as a credit card. Oh mighty credit card, you are both a terrible and terrific enabler of my online buying addiction.
And so, every once in a while, I perform a massive purge of all my stuff, but it’s tough. I have a bunch of old hard drives, tiny compared to today’s standards, that I just can’t bring myself to dispose of. There are a bunch of computers in various states of disrepair in my house. I keep telling myself that someday I’ll fix up one of them as a MAME box, I’ll fix up another one to be a dedicated server. And yes, I’ve been saying for months now that I’d like to sell off or give away most of my t-shirts.
Over that time, instead of culling my collection, I’ve added to it substantially.
There have been few times in my life when I truly felt I was at “Inbox Zero.” It was a glorious, but fleeting, feeling. I know that I have the willpower and ability to do it again, and to stay there every day with some maintenance, but it would require another giant push of initial effort to clean out my various inboxes. I’ve resigned myself to doing small bursts of cleaning here and there to keep the piles at bay, telling myself that I’ll get back to Zero over the weekend. As I have more and more to do, the date just keeps getting pushed farther and farther back.
I was planning on doing it this weekend.
Friday, January the 30th, 2009
030 - Rememberences Of Shows Past, Part II: Who Ya Gonna Call?
“Heat ‘em up!” I said, in my best serious Venkman impression. It was hard to keep a serious face though, as me and my friends made that characteristic sound of the proton packs charging up.
“Bwahahaha, throw it!” I said, through choked laughter, as me and my friends made even more sound effects, shooting our “proton packs” into the air at invisible spooks.
Those were the days.
Alright, alright, I’ll admit it. I wanted to be a Ghostbuster growing up. As a kid, my friends and I often put on our backpacks, took paper towel tubes, chained the tubes to the backpacks with paperclips, and made all manner of sound effects to indulge our wildest ‘bustin fantasies.
Before the advent of all this fancy shcmancy digimal entertainment, all a kid needed was a little cardboard, some office supplies, and a healthy disregard for reality, to completely transport himself to an alternate dimension: a world in which ghosts, both friendly and malevolent, were simply a fact of life, and supernatural attacks took place on a near daily basis.
(I also spent many hours envisioning what it’d be like to be a anthropomorphic nunchaku, made from two toilet paper tubes chained together with paperclips, wielding reptile, but that’s a topic for another post.)
At its core, the Ghostbusters’ story is really just one about a team of glorified, jumpsuited exterminators. There is a finite amount of seriousness you can apply to that idea before it sounds ridiculous. The cartoon managed to take this fairly silly idea and actually give it some meat. For example, I was surprised at how comfortable the four were with the idea of sacrificing themselves for the good of the world. The Ghostbusters were actually quite heroic, not to mention intelligent. With the exception of Winston, they are all doctors. Looking back, it’s obvious that each one fell into a certain archetype, but they were still all admirable characters.
The ghosts themselves were all very bright and colorful. Just look at their mascot, Mr. Stay Puft. I mean, granted, he could squash you with just one misstep of his gigantic marshmallow shoe, but still, how could you not love this guy? I know I’m not the only person in the world who wants this; I desire with every fiber of my being a big squishy doll of him. Slimer too is so adorable. I desperately want someone to make me a Slimer plush. I would put it right next to my huge Spongebob Squarepants doll, and they’d be best friends forever. To me, the scariest looking creatures on the show were the reanimated skeletons. They actually looked kind of menacing. Most of the other bad guys looked totally sweet, even when they were trying to kill the main characters.
Sure, the episodes were a bit formulaic, but they had enough variety to keep things interesting. Oftentimes, the Ghostbusters were tasked with capturing (or sometimes, helping out) supernatural entities from classic myths and legends. In almost every episode, the writers came up with some reason why the Ghostbusters couldn’t just use their proton packs and traps, or why they would be ineffective against their foe. This forced them into some pretty creative solutions, which never failed to entertain.
Aykroyd’s original movie script had a far more epic scope than did the final script for the first movie. It took the ‘busters through time and space, doing battle against huge, world-ending god-monsters. I would have loved to have seen this version borne out.
The cartoon and the movies had a very good balance of gravity and fantasy, and when it fell on the side of silliness, it did so effectively. In one episode, a power outage caused the ghost containment unit to shut down. The team had less than a minute to fix it until all Hell literally would have broken loose. So what did they come up with? They rigged a turbine to some kid’s bicycle and had Janine, their hot secretary, pedal her ass off to generate the electricity.
On the serious side, there was plenty of scientific sounding jargon thrown around. Of course, I have no idea how accurate it was, but it always sounded impressive.
To sum it up, The Real Ghostbusters kicked ass. It fleshed out the franchise, giving life to that entire world and introducing a generation of kids, like myself, to the joys of cardboard tubes.
I could go on, but shit, this is cutting in to my precious Ghostbusters-watching time.
Thursday, January the 29th, 2009
029 - A Compulsion For Efficiency
Whenever I see people using computers in a way that I view as less than optimal, I feel obliged to tweak their experience for them. Maybe it’s indicative of a larger complex, some mild degree of OCD, but it physically hurts me to see people do this. I have no idea where this came from. The only analogy I can think of is seeing someone abuse their dog or cat. Wouldn’t you feel a little upset if you saw that?
Once, back in high school, I simply expanded the size of my friend’s “quick launch” bar, so as to give access to all the icons he hand in there. I thought I was doing him a great favor.
His fists disagreed.
No, I’m kidding. My friend didn’t actually rain blows upon me. He was just incredulous that I would so comfortably change someone else’s settings without even asking them. Looking back, it was kind of a dick move. How supercilious I must have seemed to presume to know better than him how he should use his computer.
So when A saw how I had a dock, similar to the built in one on Macs, on my windows machine, and said she wanted it too, I was overjoyed. A is what I would consider your average, casual computer user. She knows about “teh internets,” she understands most of the basic metaphors used in almost all computer programs. She can get around, but she simply never had the need to go beyond the basics. Most people are happy at this level and will never see the vast riches that can be gained from a little tweaking.
When she asked me to install the dock for her though, I knew that this could be a gateway for her.
After I set it up for her last night, she moved most of her shortcuts on there, deleting them from her desktop.
“Hey, my dock disappeared,” said the text message.
Awesome.
“So uh, think you can fix my computer tonight?” she said.
“Sure,” I said, “I’ll pick you up after work.”
Wednesday, January the 28th, 2009
028 - The Speed Of Impuissance
“Crap,” I said, looking nervously at my gorgy clock.
It was 3:23 and I still felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything today.
One of my more consistent anxieties revolves around the idea that I’m constantly falling behind. Be it at work or in my hobbies, I never feel like I can get ahead. Or if I can, it is only a brief moment before I recognize some other area of my life in which I am completely lagging.
If I had to pinpoint when this started happening, it was probably in college. In high school, structures were set in place to give students immediate feedback if they were fucking up. Homework was due every week, tests were given regularly, and of course, attendance was taken every day.
I would estimate that I attended about 50% of my lectures and discussions, total, in undergrad.
That was about when I started having recurring nightmares. Looking back, it was clear that they stemmed from this growing feeling of uneasiness, of not knowing. There were some variations on the theme, but they were all very similar.
In my nightmares I was back in high school, enrolled in some math class. I had been slacking off and ditching class so much that I didn’t realize that there was an exam that day. Compounding my terror was the fact that there was some homework due as well, or some project. I lapsed into sheer helplessness and frustration as I sat through the exam, knowing fully well that I would fail, and that it’d be my own goddamn fault.
Fortunately, I haven’t had that nightmare in a few years. Even so, the sentiment creeps into my conscious mind every now and again.
For the past two days, I had worried that I was not working fast enough at my job. Somehow, just with the application of deadlines, a usually pleasurable activity became a terrifying, insurmountable task. I was working as fast as I could, and yet, I constantly chided myself for not being fast enough.
I caught myself doing that today, and I stopped. Once I realized what I was doing, and I acknowledged how silly it was, it naturally dissolved. I smiled, confident in the knowledge that I was making good progress on my projects, and more importantly, that I was doing it right, with clean code.
I took a step back from the keyboard, took a walk around the office, grabbed a snack, and dove back in.
Tuesday, January the 27th, 2009
027 - A Hunger So Ancient
There are days when I want to cook a nice healthful meal for myself upon arriving home from work. Then there are days like today, when I decided I’d almost kill myself.
“Frito Pie?!,” I asked, “Where can I find this recipe?” It was a reasonable question; little did I know that it would lead me down a hedonistic path of self destruction.
Its mystical properties merely hinted at in tale and anecdote, the Frito Pie was something I had never experienced firsthand. As legend had it, to ingest this potent concoction was to experience Heaven and Hell at once, to be one with God and the Devil and every living being in between. In fact, it was said that you did not consume the Frito Pie, Frito Pie consumed you.
Having just learned about this orgiastic feast for the senses, I had a tough decision on my hands. The ingredients were readily available, and I could just go buy them, much in the same way I could easily purchase stuff in the household cleaners section and make a bomb big enough to kill God. Of course, the acute condition known as “stank breath” is none too appealing to the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter).
I decided to take my chances; I had to know if the legends were true.
After gathering the materials, I began the careful, methodical construction.
“Oh my God, are you making Frito Pie for dinner?” asked A. She had come over to my place to do homework.
“Yes,” I said, “and I’m just as scared as you are.”
I took the bowl out of the microwave, cradling it with two potholders. “It’s… it’s more beautiful than I ever could have imagined,” I said.
The cheese was still bubbling, angrily, as I took my first tentative bite. My mouth flooded with tastes and textures the likes of which mortal men were not meant to know. Through some sort of divine alchemy, the creation was far more powerful than the sum of its parts.
Before I knew what had happened, I had finished the bowl, and its mystical properties began to take effect. A great weight solidified deep in my guts, and I felt compelled, as if struck by a physical force, to lie down.
The legends were true after all.
Monday, January the 26th, 2009
026 - The Birthdaystravaganza, Part: II
The first time I ended up at The Ruby, it was because the line was too long at Level 3, one of two clubs located inside the mall. It was my friend E’s idea to go there. We got there at the crack of 10:30 and already, the line was populated by about a hundred dudes in their finest untucked collared shirts.
Seriously, the line was literally eighty dudes; groups of hot girls were getting waved in. It’s good to know that institutional sexism is alive and well in the club scene.
So after waiting in line for way too long, we decided to hoof it down Hollywood Boulevard. Surely, we would stumble across another club or happening watering hole. When we saw The Ruby, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of immense gratitude. This place had only a $10 cover charge, compared to the Level 3’s $20, and there was no line.
Excelsior!
Inside, I actually made some lasting friendships, and to this day, I think fondly of The Ruby and it’s divey charm.
I was not surprised to find out that this charm was not affected by their “remodeling.”
I laid my crisp Andrew Jackson on the bar and ordered two Kamikazes.
Ah yes, there’s nothing quite like imbibing a drink named after Japanese suicidal pilots.
With drinks in hand, I started my search for M and her cohorts. I casually sipped from both drinks, when suddenly, a large man bumped into me, causing me to drop one, glass and all.
Crap.
I glared at him. He glared back, disgusted, like it was my fault.
It took every ounce of my willpower to remember to show compassion to those less fortunate than I. You know, instead of just smashing my other drink into his skull, which was my surprisingly violent first instinct.
The moment passed. I composed myself and continued my search.
“Oh my God, it’s M!” I said, in the smoking area.
“Oh my God, Keenahn!” she screamed, attacking me with a hug.
She was with two other young looking girls and some dude who seemed a little out of place.
“Happy birthday!” I said.
“OMG, thanks so much for coming out! I didn’t think you’d come,” she said.
“What? I wouldn’t miss this,” I said, smiling.
M is such a sweetheart.
We caught up for a few minutes, making her other friends feel a little awkward since we were just lost in our own little bubble. Then, another guy started hovering around.
“Oh my God, here he comes,” she whispered to me.
“What? Who?” I asked.
“Oh this creepy guy who bought us drinks, and now he wants us to leave with him or something. Do me a favor and stick around, ok?” she said.
I am all too familiar with the ancient art of the cockblock, as I’ve experienced it firsthand many times. This was familiar territory for me.
This guy, though, did not need much blocking; he was doing a fine job of it himself.
Sunday, January the 25th, 2009
025 - An Extraordinary Night Of Culture
“So uh, the show is at seven tomorrow… you know, if you’re interested,” she said, lingering, being quite subtle.
“Uh-huh, cool,” I said.
A is a member of on of her school’s Thai clubs. I knew she had been preparing for their annual culture show for weeks, and last night she dropped some hints that she desired my presence there.
If I wrote all of her words out as text, I’d be using italics all over the place to decorate them.
I wondered to myself all day today, were we at the point in our relationship where I was obligated to attend this stuff? What was my duty here?
What’s the worst that could happen? After all, this would be a nice chance to meet some of her friends and other Thai people. Also, it wouldn’t cost me much, and it would definitely make her feel good to see me. Ah Hell, it was an easy sell.
I decided I would just surprise her after the show, so as to not aggravate any nervousness she might have. Donning my coolest jacket, and splashing on my finest discontinued cologne, I got in my car.
When I arrived at the amphitheater, the show was already a few minutes underway. There were three girls on stage, trying quite convincingly to act like little kids, introducing the show. The rest of the night was a non-stop action packed evening of drama, education, dance, music, fashion, and yes, an important life lesson in the third act.
There were a few people sitting behind me who perhaps didn’t appreciate it as much as I. One girl in particular, who I imagined was dragged there by her boyfriend the camera man, pretty much cracked jokes the entire night. In the past, that’s what I would have been doing too.
At an objective level, this shit was not Shakespeare. This shit was not even Die Hard (which, for the record, is fantastic). Even so, I was still able to let my brain slide gently down that grade to the point where I could heartily and genuinely enjoy what was in front of me.
The types of jokes these people were making really just demonstrated a lack of appreciation, and served only to generate more suffering in the world. In order to amuse yourself at others’ expense, one must first generate negativity in themselves, so any amusement derived is fruitless. Certainly, constructive criticism is good, and no art can survive without it, but the comments these people were making could have no possible positive impact.
I remembered to have compassion for them too, as I was much the same in the past.
The entire show unfolded less like a play and more like a homework assignment. I imagine someone from on high told the writer, “Alright, we’ve got to incorporate a fashion show, a couple hip hop dances, cultural music, a sexy rendition of ‘I Will Survive,’ and a very special moral message, all in 120 minutes.” In that regard, I’d say the production succeeded admirably. The plot was plausible and did in fact incorporate all the aforementioned items. It also had a few (albeit predictable) twists that kept it interesting.
At the end of the night, I was looking to be entertained, and I was.
“Hey man,” I said to the president of the club after the show, “Fantastic job. You really pulled it off. I had a wonderful time.”
“Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it,” he said.
“Aww, it was so sweet of you to come, thanks hon” A said to me, embracing me.
“Baby, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I said. “It was extremely…cultural.”
Saturday, January the 24th, 2009
024 - A Slave To His Art, Part I: Tools Of The Trade
He sat in his dark bedroom, his face illuminated only by the glow of cathode rays. Rice long gone and forgotten, he ate cold Mongolian beef straight from the greasy take-out carton, careful not to get any on his hands.
After all, cleaning a keyboard and mouse is a pain in the ass.
This was especially true with his current mouse, a Microsoft Sidewinder, which was impossible to take apart non-destructively. It was one of the pricier mice out there, boasting a respectable maximum sensitivity of 2000 dpi (standard mice clock in at around 800 dpi), and removable weights, for those desiring a lighter mousing experience. This little indulgence indulgence was completely overboard and unnecessary for his purposes, but cool as hell.
He picked up two, accidentally, after bidding somewhat overzealously on eBay. One sat at his desk at work. The other, who’s left button was sticking a bit lately, lived at home, gliding sleekly over the marble slab he employed as a mousepad. With the meaty clicks of each of its buttons, the Sidewinder allowed him to navigate his digital domain with minimal wrist movement while delivering a satisfying tactile experience.
All black with red LEDs, two vertically aligned, round, silver buttons, and a big metallic scrollwheel, it looked completely out of place next to his IBM Model M keyboard. More accurately, his model M looked downright ancient in comparison with the rest of his rig.
The Model M is a beige rectangular monstrosity, borne out of the good old days of terminal computing, when keyboards were meant to last more than a few months, and repetitive strain injuries were a sign of a life well lived. Each keypress responded with a resounding click, adding a much needed rhythm to his otherwise erratic typing. He picked this one up from what seemed to be a computer graveyard outside the engineering building at his school. The date of manufacturing stamped on this one was October 8th, 1986, making it a mere two years younger than he.
He knew quality when he saw it. It was what lead him to his line of work and what drove most of his hobbies. It was what caused him to leap out of bed every morning, and lose countless hours of sleep every night.
Every waking hour he had was another step on the endless path to perfection.
Friday, January the 23rd, 2009
023 - A Revitalized Enthusiasm For Enterprise: Part I
Now that I’m working full time, my days have fallen into a pretty standard routine. I wake up, I write, I go to work, I write code, I come home, I write words and edit pictures, and I go to sleep. Not that I’m complaining, I’m pretty happy with my strict regimen, and it certainly has saved me money. Also, I take great comfort in knowing that I can at once return to my wild and crazy college ways if I so desired.
The only drawback is that I find myself a bit lacking in conversation topics.
Thankfully, my job does not demand one hundred percent of my brain to perform it. I guess the part of my intellect required to write code is different from the one used to listen to words, because I can work just as hard while taking in podcasts and lectures as without them. Of course, if I have to read something, I pause the tracks, as it is nearly impossible for me to read and listen to words simultaneously without missing one or the other.
And so, one of the numerous ways I’ve been enhancing myself is through the Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner lecture series. These lectures are pretty awesome, but are sometimes outright ruined by this really annoying and bitchy sounding woman conducting the interviews.
I apologize for that last comment, perhaps she has a really rich interior life, filled with beautiful thoughts. I may never meet her, so I probably won’t ever know for sure. But based on her diction and tonality, I feel a metric ton of suffering just listening to her. I imagine that this feeling would be magnified in her physical presence. Truthfully, she reminds me of that woman on that one show, you know, about the modeling agency? I have no idea how I made that connection. I guess I just feel immense suffering from both of them. Whenever she’s conducting the interview, though, I have to remind myself constantly to generate metta for her and others less fortunate than I, lest I simply get overwhelmed by the intensity of her anguish.
Such is the blessing and the curse of my potent empathy.
Regardless, the speakers are most often very positive and level-headed. They have reignited my fervant desire to start my own company.
Even more importantly, they’ve given me tons of stuff to talk about.
There was one episode, where a former Hewlett-Packard executive stepped down from her post to take up a director position at the local branch of the Humane Society. It was a pretty incredible story, and it was super interesting seeing how she used her business savvy to turn the place around, greatly reducing the kill rate while simultaneously increasing the adoption and retention rates.
Hers is just one of the unbelievably triumphant stories covered in this series.
I hope to one day be invited to add mine to the series as well.
Thursday, January the 22nd, 2009
022 - Tempting Fate
“Food is here,” my coworker said, passing my desk.
Awesome.
Even in today’s economic climate, my company still managed to, without fail, provide us with lunch every other Thursday. This was good news, as the supplies in the once cornucopic snack room seemed to be running thin.
Today, we were furnished with hot dogs and fixin’s from The Stand.
Normally, I would have been ecstatic. But since coming back from my retreat, I had been eating so well. I was taking very good care of my body, especially in terms of what I was putting in it, and I knew from past experience that all it took was one day of bad eating to send me back into the downward spiral of junk food and malnutrition.
I’m no nutritionist, but from my vaguely scientific understanding, it seems that human beings crave foods that they already eat, and we eat the foods we crave, resulting in an endless feedback loop. We also seem to crave foods that contain nutrients in which we are deficient. Thus, the secret to good nutrition is simply to make a strong effort to break out of the junk food habit, and to find healthy foods we can fall in love with. This is entirely possible, I felt it during my retreat.
It was kind of a strange sensation, but once I came back, I actually had a strong urge to eat raw beets, mushrooms, and sprouted brown rice.
The best course of action for my body would be not to eat the hot dogs at all, but as luck would have it, I forgot to pack my lunch today. No, I saw this as another test, another opportunity, to see if I could eat the food provided, and then withstand the strong cravings that would surely follow.
I grabbed two hot dogs and loaded them up with chili, onions, and cheese. “Here goes nothing,” I thought, as I took the first bite.