Captain's Log, Supplemental

One of the guys I work with has a bike! The vroom vroom kind. He told me what it was and I'd never heard of it before, but he said it is a sportbike! Wait a minute...I know this because I saw him with his helmet...that means he rode today...it was like 40 degrees?!? Damn crazy bikers. And there were some scenes with house on his bike, also. Ironic that a guy with a bum leg rides a bike more than twice as powerful as mine. I tell myself that he's just a fictional character, but it never helps.

I was discussing time zones with my office mate today, and he brought up an interesting query: how will we handle time zones in the future when Amazon expands to Mars? I found it quite interesting, as evidenced by the expression on his face when I brought up the general theory of relativity. Seriously though, time on Mars would be problematic. For one thing, days and years are different. Suddenly GMT/Zulu/UTC is no longer universal, since you would have to come up with some mapping to martian days and years. And the orbits of Earth and Mars are your best bet for a clock. You can't really use the time the sun takes to orbit the center of the galaxy--that reminds me, Battlestar might have a good ending. Anyway...so besides the lack of something common between Mars and Earth, you also have...time dilation? Yes! And then there's the problem of communicating between Earth and Mars. I don't know how far away they are from each other, but I'm going to bet that Light is going to takes a few minutes. Makes TCP acknowledgements less useful. And then what do you do when Mars and Earth are on the opposite sides of the sun from each other? Thats going to make next day shipping a real challenge.

Some of my friends called me tonight while drunk. From what I could make out from the slurring, they miss me. They also want me to visit, which seems odd because even though I've been here for a month I feel like I just got here. I think while I was in corporate housing, with the nice furniture, this whole move felt more like one long adventure...like I was studying abroad in Seattle. Now that I have my guitars and my ugly cheap furniture, and now that I've spent a night or two sleeping on my crappy futon, it has begun to sink in. I live in Seattle. Lets be honest: I was barely aware of this entire city most of my life. I'd heard of it, sure. And I knew it wasn't near where I lived. Now I'm here. And my back hurts from this stupid futon. How did I sleep on this thing for a year and a half? And I don't have anyone to play Settlers with. I was going to post on craigslist something about hanging out and playing Settlers, but when I looked at the other posts they were all like rock climbing and softball and football. My post would be like the dorkiest one there. Ok this one about a puppy pay date...thats pretty dorky.

In other news, I went to Ikea with Luke today and spent a $900 on Ikea furniture. I really hate checking out at a store and finding out what I'm spending. Somehow the grand total always seems larger than the sum of all the price tags I looked at...by a factor of 4. And we went to Ikea because we wanted cheap furnature. And I passed (for now) on buying the cool L-shaped couch that turns into an awesome queen bed, because it was too expensive. Actually, thats not true. It was all gray and ugly. If it was black, I would have bought it. Anyway, instead, I bought a bed that was labeled $200. Thought it was a great deal. But then, like, you have to get slats, and a metal thing, and the cheapest queen mattress they had, and its more like $500. And then...then I bought a kitchen table, so that I would have somewhere to play Settlers. And then I bought the minimum number of chairs I would need to play Settlers with two of my imaginary friends: 3 chairs. And then a drawer...some swedish fish...pear cider...$900! WTF? How do poor and/or frugal people get furnature? I know they have it. Maybe I should have looked on craiglist...except you really dont want to look on craigslist for a mattress. Ohh...I could have gotten a bed. Like last time. Or some chairs. Dammit. Each chair was like $40. I hate money. I don't even know what to do with my sign-on bonus from Amazon: I don't want to put it in the stock market, cause that sucks, and my cousin says when its in a regular old savings account the interest is so low that you actually lose money after taxes and inflation. My money is currently in a savings account.

Anyway...so I actually got my first task done this past week. I realized, then, just what a scary prospect it was. I wrote code that is eventually going to make it into production. Sure, people are going to look at it and test it and all that, but code I wrote is actually going to power the website. Real data from people in the real world is actually going to pass through my functions. And I don't work one some fun feature of the site. I work on the backbone. If I screw up badly enough, Amazon will lose a lot of money. I'm not exaggerating. The wheels of industry will stop (metaphorically speaking) and people will not get their crap. Its a good time though. I like being just a programmer, and working with people who are also programmers. Good programmers. I never look at someone's code and want to scream. Actually that's not true. Last week I couldn't figure out why my crap wasn't working and I dug a little too deep into the bowels of their code base, and did not like what I found there. I probably shouldn't tell you what it was, so I'll leave you with an analogy: making toast with a nuclear reactor.

Still haven't really hung out with anyone that I didn't already know before, but I know which Salsa club I'm going to try next: China Harbor. Its half the distance to Century Ballroom. Also, a bunch of salsa classes are starting up, so that should be a good way to meet people. Aw, man, now I miss my friends from La Luna. Of course, the nostalgia is partly mitigated by that disaster with Kristal...never has "out of your league" been so literal. That was a good learning experience though. Now I know that life is not like a chick flick. For example, if the girl of your dreams asks you to be her dance partner in a performance class that is above your ability, you should find out if she is dating the dance instructor before you say yes. That is some valuble information right there. Also, if you are not confident of your ability to perform, if you think there is a good chance you might screw up big and not be able to recover, those aren't just nervous jitters. That is a real danger.

Not to worry, though. They don't really have big studios with lots of performance classes out here anyway...at least I haven't found one yet. Nothing on the scale of La Luna.

Shell Shock

I made an ass of myself in a coffee shop today. I asked for a vanilla chai tea. I don't really know what that is, but I understand it that it tastes like vanilla, which I like, and it may be tea. Then I stood around while they made it and got absorbed in the television and the girl making the drinks called out "nonfat chai tea!" as she set a fresh drink on the little table thing. I automatically moved to grab it, because I was the only person or ordered anything in the last five minutes, but then the words "nonfat" sunk in. As a skinny person, and someone who knows what olestra is, I've nursed a special hatred of all things "diet" and "nonfat." Partially justified, by the way; once I accidentally drank half some kind of werid weight loss drink with the word "fuze" on it and felt sick immediately. But I digress.

I froze for a second, wondering if the guy heard my order wrong. Impossible. He was all like "you said vanilla, right?" And I said yes. So what happened? I don't know. What I should have done, I realized later, is ask her if that was for me. What I actually did was just stand there waiting for her to make the next drink so I could see if it was mine. She wasn't even done with the next one, though, before she picked it up again and yelled "NON-FAT CHAI TEA LATTE FOR DAVE," pretending she didn't already know it was for me. Oops.

I left as quickly as I could, staring at my paper cup, wondering what gross manufactured chemicals swirled around inside my hot beverage, waiting to give me a fake sense of being full. The coffee shop was only about 100 meters from the building where I worked, but I already regretted the entire trip. I had only ventured out into the cold because I was getting quite chilly at my desk...some kind of air vent was constantly blowing cold air onto me. But I digress. I considered throwing out my drink and walking across the walkway to starbucks and trying again, but that would have been too weird even for me. Instead I just sipped the drink and went back to my desk to get some work done. I don't want to turn into a coffee snob. I don't even like coffee that much. I just like going places where you can get something hot to drink that has milk and vanilla syrup in it.

In other news, I am starting to get the hang of the bus system. That is, when I need to get on a specific bus, like one that stops at specific points on the surface at specific times along its route, I can usually get there. All you get to do is get there like ten minutes early, buy a crossaint from a nearby coffee shop that has flies on it but which you still eat most of because you are hungry and are about to go climbing, and then huddle in the little bus stop booth and stamp your feet until the warm bus rolls up. Then, you may or may not pay as you enter the bus, depending on where the bus is, where you're going, what time of day it is and whether or not the planets are aligned. They have little signs to tell you, though.

Oh, and speaking of climbing...they have 2 gyms up here. I don't know if I wrote about them yet, but one has top-roping with ATCs like I'm used to, and the other has top-roping with those stupid gregery pieces of crap that I hate. In fact, one of my personal goals right now is to go climbing there a whole night without complaining about the belay devices. So far it hasn't happened. It is sad irony that the gym with the stupid belay devices has a lot more top rope courses. I'm not sure what to do about that. I suppose I should look on the bright side: every time I go there I fall more in love with ATCs. When I'm belaying someone I fantasize about how it would feel it I was using an ATC instead. I wonder if my ATC gets lonely, stuffed in my gym bag in the locker room, without the harness and shoes to keep it company while I climb.

Last night I got a full nights sleep by accident, and discovered why I've been falling asleep at my desk at work so much.

I'm feeling generally disoriented again. I'm out of the corporate housing apartment and into my own, which is a mirror image of the corporate housing one, but it has all of my stuff instead of the corporate housing stuff. Just when the corporate housing apartment was starting to feel like home. After that king bed, I feel like I'm camping out here...like I should pitch a tent on top of my crappy futon and sleep in my sleeping bag. Such a weird feeling. And its difficult getting places...especially without a car (and with the weather too cold to ride) whenever I think about going somewhere, first I have to ask "where is it???" and then "how to I get there?" I'm losing interest in locations where the answer is "spend half of your day on busses."

Also, I don't think I wrote about this yet: I spent $125 on towels. Towels. I did write about this...whatever. Since then, I've started looking at price tags on things in stores before I buy them. I understand this is a custom that most normal people practice when shopping. I can see the benefits...today I bought a smaller trash can than the one I was looking at, because no trash can should ever cost $25 (and if it does, the thing better be able to walk up and grab the trash out of your hand) . As a result, I only spent $50 at bed bath and beyond. Which, by the way, does not sell paper towels. I don't know why. Paper towels could go in both the kitchen and the bathroom, and I have some ideas that would make them handy in the bedroom, too. But whatever. I stole the roll from the corporate housing department. I also took the dishwasher soap. Part of my dishwasher is broken. I asked them to fix it, so someone who works for the apartment complex came into my apartment, put a bunch of my dishes in the dishwasher, and ran it, and then wrote "fixed" on the little work sheet. The guys probably thinks I'm a total moron now. The dishwasher technically works without the piece thats missing. I think I'm going to order the part I need off the internet and fix it myself. I'm all about being assertive and stuff, but I can see this turning into a big passive-aggressive battle fought through notes and work slips. Seriously, what a jackass. They probably have the exact same dishwasher in every other apartment. I don't know how they didn't notice there was a giant piece of plastic missing. Whatever.

Words of Wisdom

If you are home and watching tv when a Girls Gone Wild Commercial comes on, you have clearly made some wrong choices about how to spend your night. Every time I see one of those commercials I look at the time and realize that the people with social lives are out drinking. Unless its a weekday; then it just means I was supposed to be in bed an hour ago. I'm meeting some people at work, though. Also Gabe is here. Forgot about him. I should invite him climbing next week. Him and my office mate's friend. And I need to hang out with Luke. My lack of a social life is incredible. I never considered myself a particularly social person, but back home, whether due to a large number of friends or an innate calendering deficiency, I often had the heart-wrenching task of deciding between two things I wanted to do on a given night. I usually attempted to do both, which rarely worked out. Here, though, total opposite.

I tried looking on craigslist for stuff I wanted to do. Like volleyball or something. Didn't really find anything. Then I looked at the personal ads because I was bored. That was basically a dead end, except for the girl I met in the "just looking for friends" section. She is incredibly attractive, and apparently looking to not actually date, and doesnt actually live in Seattle, and also we've never actually met. We are making vague plans to possibly explore Seattle together in the indeterminate future. She is so attractive, actually, that I thought I was being scammed. But then she told me she had never heard of any of the bands I like, so that seems pretty real. For someone who thinks meeting girls on the internet is stupid I sure do talk about it a lot. Maybe I have too much time on my hands...

...which brings me back to tonight: I would have made an effort to see Watchmen, but it is sold out everywhere. I'm not excited about it enough to battle what I feel are too many sudden Watchmen fans. The only people who knew about Watchmen before the movie were like comic book nerds, and people like me who looked it up on wikipedia after they showed a trailer for it when we saw Dark Knight.

The real reason I stayed home was I had some spaghetti left over and knew there was a good chance House would be on. It was. The spaghetti was good, but the meat sauce I used apparently expired in YU01. Or will expire. I'm not exactly sure when that is. I also watched Battlestar tonight. What a disappointment that was. All of the characters are whiny and crying now, and pretty much none of them are in control. Its as if the characters themselves are just waiting to react to the next plot twist. I know I am. Most of the plot twists now are dumb.

All of my stuff is sitting in my new apartment. Unfortunately, it doesnt have cable or internet, so I'm still basically living in the corporate housing apartment, roughly five doors down. Also the fresh paint smell hasn't gone away, not even when I opened the sliding door to the outside and forgot to close it for more than a day. Also, [one of] the hot girl[s] who works in the office, the one who rides motorcycles, took part of my dishwasher because none of us knew what it was for. Either that, or she didn't take it and it is lost among all of my stuff. Either way I can only do dishes here. Plus, the internet.

I emailed a flight school last night and still haven't gotten a response. I think I'm going to just show up their tomorrow and just find someone to talk to in their flight operations building. I need to figure out the bus routes to there anyway. I've learned that outside the downtown areas, the bus routes aren't so confusing cause there is usually only one bus, and you'd better not miss it.

I spent $125 on towels. I'm not kidding. I walked in to Bed Bath and Beyond, which is located dangerously on my way home, and I got some towels. And a scrubby brush. And a shower curtain. $125. Most of that was the $40 shower curtain that I should have studied more closely. I know the scrubby brush wasn't the problem, that was only like $3. Still. I paid $7 for some orange juice. Prices are ridiculous. Did I mention the girl who works in the apartment office likes techno? I'm going to have to keep a budget or something.

Work is getting difficult. I'm still useless. I'm not really allowed to tell you how Amazon's software works, but I think it is safe for me to say it is ridiculously complex. Like, nuclear reactors probably have simpler software than we do. And I don't know any of it. I'm going to be useless for about 3 months. Or 6, depending on who you ask. I am enjoying it though. Life is better when you don't hate your work.