That Was Easy

Breaking into his mind. It's like hacking into a computer - all it takes is time.
--Tank

Meeting People.  Being friendly, eye contact, saying high, looking good, blah blah blah.  Turns out, its actually not that difficult.  It is like hacking;  all it takes is time.  Unfortunately time is a luxury, but we'll get to that later.

Turns out, it really takes almost no effort to sort of engage people you see every day.  Like the poor security guards at the little gates we walk through who are bored to tears, or the receptionist that keeps saying high to me, or the people in the mail room, or the guy at the gym, or wherever you get lunch.  All you really have to do is say one thing beyond the boring-ass greetings everybody does, and you have a conversation.

Looking good requires going to a gym.  I have always known that if you need to change something about your weight or muscle mass, you can't just do a one time thing or a diet; you have to change your lifestyle.  I just never realized how fucking easy it is to start going to a gym.  I mean...its like right there, down the street.  And the weight machines have instructions on them.  I actually just walked up to one and used it.  Didn't need to take a class or hire a personal trainer or read a book or take a test or anything.  Lifting weights is about a million times easier than getting a pilots license.  I can't believe I haven't done this sooner.  I am starting to suspect that whatever happened to me in the air last year may be related to the fact that I drink too much soda and am, despite the skiing, in very poor shape.  So lets see what happens.

Looking good also requires not dressing like an undergrad computer science student.  I made an attempt a while ago to completely overhaul my wardrobe.  I hired these two girls, spent nearly two grand on designer shit, and got an earful from my geek friends who were appalled at the very idea of dressing a certain way to impress girls.  I have yet to think of a way to explain to these guys how little I care about their opinions.  Though the shopping spree was a valuable experience, most of the clothes didn't take.  For one thing, the girls failed to understand how lazy I was...that if a pair of shoes didn't come with laces (who sells shoes without laces??) that I might never actually get around to buying new laces for them.  So I need more work in this department.  I have learned to start caring about shoes;  it seems like girls care more about how shoes look than any other article of clothing.  I think this is dumb, but since I can't change how every girl feels it is time to get with the program.  The fake cowboy boots these girls got me to buy were a good step up from the ugly brown shoes that I bought when my friends told me I had to stop wearing sneakers to bars.  Next up, I think, some kind of motorcycle boot.  Then I need to do something about these shirts;  they are bland, and I just found out that American Apparel supported SOPA.  American Apparel was the only store that make shirts that fit me, but I can't imagine what kind of asshole in charge of a clothing company would support legislation designed to threaten the entire tech sector of the economy.  I just know that I hope he gets bit by a poisonous rat and dies by puking hit guts out.  And I'm not buying American Apparel anymore.  And I plan to bulk up and not need their shirts anyway.


Meeting people also requires...being somewhere where there are people to meet.  Century Ballroom still fails at this;  I was there last night and there were as usual, an extra 35 guys.  I went up to some girls at a table and asked if they wanted to dance.  One pointed at her water as an excuse for not dancing.  I did my best to feign politeness as I walked away.  Then I dance with the three girls I knew and left.  Salsa needs some work...but new clubs, and friends of friends are probably a good enough recipe for success.

Meeting people also requires money.  My biggest waste of money is food.  Given my lackluster performance with the attempt to cook pork chops, I am going to try a different approach.  My personal assistant is coming over tomorrow with something called a  crockpot to show me how to not suck at life.  If this scheme works I could save hundreds of dollars every month.

Yeah, that's the theme;  all this shit really requires is time.  Time is the one thing I don't have enough of.  If I barely have enough time to hold down a job where you are expected to work more than 40 hours a week and go out and have a social life, there is no way I can hold such a job, and have a social life, and develop some income on the side.  I want to try though.  One thing is to become more efficient at work.

Being more efficient at work will be difficult.  This guy at work came back from a few months of leave.  He got added to my project, and got stuck with the documentation.  Then he rewrote the documentation I wrote, but added a lot of story stuff and removed all of the developer-oriented things I was trying to collect.  The intended audience of the documentation is developers.  Then, today, we got in an argument about the best way to create a shared library (code that other programmers can use instead of writing their own) for some code.  He had previously attempted to create such a library, but had made it too elaborate and it was shot down by management.  I insisted on taking my own crack at the library the minute I realized that developers were starting to copy and paste code.  We started arguing.  His position was that the library could only be done a certain way.  My position was that I wanted to look at the code before discussing it.  After ten minutes I convinced him to stop arguing with me and let me look at the code.  I started looking at the code.  He started asking me questions every five or ten minutes about something else.  I'm not sure if you've ever tried to concentrate on a difficult task (like reading someone else's undocumented code and coming up with design that is reusable by 10 teams) while someone is asking you a question every five minutes, but it was one of the most annoying experiences in my life.  Being a good employee (see my post called "Mr. Responsible Guy") requires not cursing people out, so I left the building, walked two miles to a furniture store, bought a couch, and then ate two slices of pizza on my way back.  When I got back to work, I found out my co-worker from earlier in the paragraph was now writing that library that I wanted to design in order to avoid having other teams copy and paste code.  I was visibly unhappy.  I've seen this guy's code.  This is the guy who, when he saw a situation that required a mapping from thing A to thing B, created a HashMap from thing B to thing A.  I am not kidding!  He used a hash map backwards in his code.  You can't even call it an "anti-pattern" because no one does that.  I confronted him about the backwards hash map and all I got was a confusing five minute explanation about how it was easier to read.  All I had to do was turn the hash map around and I eliminated a page of code and got a nice verbal pat on the back from our resident super programmer.  We discussed it and I told myself this is just a natural part of working with people, and that disagreements will always be necessary because the only alternative is to surround yourself with useless yes-men, and so I put my earphones on to drown out the world and try and get some work done.  Five minutes later he asked me a question.

And he's not even the annoying one.

For me to be effective at work I am going to have to start working from home, at least on those days that are not lost to meetings already.  I try to avoid working from home as best I can;  ssh on windows is already uncomfortable;  add to that the awkward laptop keyboard and the fact that no one will know if I just stop working and play video games, and you have a situation where I get no work done.  That needs to change.  I have noticed that all of the senior developers actually disappear and work from home when they really need to get work done without distractions (this is what happens when you don't give people offices and stick them all together in what was supposed to be a conference room).  Also, working from home lets me do creative things like work 16 hours in one day (to take another day off) without starving on snack machine food.  So I'm going to start doing it.  The security policies create a bizarre and lame situation that I can't describe except to say that the only useful computer I can use to work from home is an Apple laptop.  For this reason, I bought an Apple laptop, and I don't care if I have to buy a new desk or what;  I'm going to get it all set up with a full keyboard and start working from home and getting some real, actual work done.

Next...I don't know.  I am addicted to working on stuff.  Maybe it is a hold over from college when I was under a lot of pressure and didn't know how to get everything done.  Maybe I just like doing projects too much.  I don't know.  There has  to be a more efficient way to make use of my time;  I just have to find it. For now, I am continuing to not let myself work on any projects until I 1) attend a drop-in game of volleyball and 2) go salsa dancing in Vancouver.  Maybe one of the two, idk.   Oh and I should start blues dancing again...that was great for meeting people.

Last night I was pulled over.  I thought I had diligently checked every car I was passing, and my sightlines looked clear in front, but Chilli Peppers came on the radio and I guess I just let my guard down.  All of a sudden, flashy lights.  Once again I was not nervous.  This not-afraid-of-cops thing is for real.  I had two drinks in two hours, roughly the exact amount of alcohol that leaves you sober but a target of alphabet recitals.  I pulled over pretty damn fast, though, and positioned myself perfectly in the lee of an exit ramp, which must have been enough to prove my sobriety because he didn't ask where I was coming from.  He accused me of doing 81.  And then we had yet another awkward silence when he waited for me to verbally react.  I didn't.  I do need to know where he came from.  I think I want to buy that rear-facing camera I've been dreaming about ever since the duck boat ran over my car.  If I did that, I could go home and watch the tape backwards and see where he came from.