Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Baby News and Pirates

    We took Brian to the doctor this week, and he’s doing great. He left the hospital at exactly nine pounds. A week and a half later, he’s up to nine pounds, fourteen ounces and has grown a quarter of an inch (up to 22.25″). He’s gorgeous, calm and an all-around great baby. We’ll be taking more pictures as we get some more sleep, and you can be sure they’ll be posted here.

    In other news, I’m a genius. No, really. I can’t tell you why I’m a genius, or how it’s been applied to my own devious ends, but I am, and I have. Unrelatedly (which I just made up), mission statements are evil. In my new group, we’re trying to come up with one. Why? I’m not sure. Mission statements are silly, if you ask me (I know you didn’t, but really, do I care if you did? Nope). They’re meaningless. No one reads them. No one actually tries to apply them. We spend days, hours, weeks trying to come up with the perfect profound sentance that sums up our purpose in our corporate lives. Everyone gets a say, a tweak here and there until it loses any meaning it might have had. To tweak a cliche: the road to hell is paved with mission statements.

    The only mission statement I’ve ever liked is Google’s. “Don’t be evil” should be every company’s mission statement. The problem is, again, no one actually lives by or follows their mission statement. It’s something to put on a plaque, in the little writeup on the corporate intranet, and give idle hands something to do.

    In an attempt to at least play along, I came up with some possibilities for my new group:

    • We’re pirates… ARGH!

    • We don’t believe in mission statements. We believe in ransom notes and manifestos.

    • We try, but usually fail, not to be evil. I mean, come on, look at us. Would you think us capable of not being evil?

    • We like pancakes and don’t believe in mission statements. We believe mission statements are meaningless pabulum that don’t do anyone any good.

    • We’re on a mission from God, much like Jake and Elwood Blues, to build scalable, maintainable, sleek and graceful web applications using the best technology for the job, good design, well-placed effort, our unmistakable talent, and irrepressable joi di vivre.

  • Pictures, Pictures of Kids and Babies, Rocks and Smiles

    We have more pictures! Of course, there’s nothing to say except they’re of my beautiful children and a couple have their funny lookin’ dad in them:

  • Two Kids, a House and a Yard

    Babies are fun. Toddlers are more fun, especially when they can talk and play games; but, babies are fun in their own way. Brian is 8 days old now, and he’s trying to lift his head, is really good at flailing his arms and kicking his blankets off. He still sleeps a lot, but is now spending more time awake and staring at us. I love it. His little eyes are focusing and moving in the same direction (no more cross eyes… at least most of the time).

    It’s fun finding out which body parts look like someone else in the family. In comparing baby pictures, Brian looks almost exactly like Max at the same age. Brian is a little longer, a little heavier and has (we think) a slightly bigger head. But, we’re probably going to have to start marking baby pictures so we know who’s who.

    We’re now a family of four. I have two kids. Ok, I think it’s sunk in now.

  • More Pictures!

    Come and get ’em!! Pictures from Wednesday and Thursday. Heather took a bunch of pictures yesterday, and I’ll let you know when they’re up.

  • Pictures from Day One

    We finally have the pictures up! Bask in the warm glow of brand new baby. I’m going to bed.

  • His First Picture

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    Here he is, Brian David Lawver (named after Jen’s dad), less than ten minutes old, and beautiful. Heather took a ton of pictures which she promised to post soon. Keep your eyes peeled for a link.

  • The Reverse of Happy

    I tried to follow up yesterday’s exercise with the opposite. The same rules apply except for the techno one, with one fudge. I honestly can’t remember putting Teardrop on a mix cd, but the way I love that song, I can’t believe it. Maybe I just never shared it with anyone.

    A couple other things I realized while compiling this list:

    • I don’t have a lot of depressing music in iTunes. I know I have more at home that I haven’t ripped yet, but it wasn’t handy to grab right this minute.

    • A lot of stuff I thought was depressing really isn’t. Morphine? Except for a couple notable exceptions, they’re not depressing at all. The songs are sometimes, sexy, other times ironic or cynical, and sometimes just plain bouncy.

    • Ben Folds and Phish both throw some great woe-is-me classics in between the happy poppy stuff. Evaporation on Whatever and Ever Amen is amazing, as is Dirt from Farmhouse

    Here it is, a CD I whimsically call Depressed as Hal:

    Title

    		 Artist

    		 Album
    II\. Lento E Largo – Tranquillissimo

    		 Henryk Gorecki

    		 Symphony No. 3
    Everybody Hurts

    		 R.E.M.

    		 Automatic For The People
    Dirt

    		 Phish

    		 Farmhouse
    I Grieve

    		 Peter Gabriel

    		 Up
    Trouble

    		 Coldplay

    		 Parachutes
    Sour Times

    		 Portishead

    		 Dummy
    Don’t Change Your Plans

    		 Ben Folds Five

    		 The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner
    Gone For Good

    		 Morphine

    		 Yes
    Teardrop

    		 Massive Attack

    		 Mezzanine
    Evaporated

    		 Ben Folds Five

    		 Whatever and Ever Amen
    Passacaglia/Bud And A Slice

    		 Joe Jackson, feat. Brad Roberts – voice, Judy LeClair – bassoon

    		 Heaven & Hell
    Sweetness Follows

    		 R.E.M.

    		 Automatic For The People
    My Head Sounds Like That

    		 Peter Gabriel

    		 Up
    Maybe I’ll Come Down

    		 Soul Coughing

    		 El Oso

  • Happy Schmidt

    Taking a break this afternoon, I decided to create a happy mix CD (for no good reason, titled Happy Schmidt). I gave myself a couple rules:

    • I couldn’t use any songs that I’ve put on another mix cd (that I could remember)

    • no techno (electronica, trip hop, etc)

    • avoid stuff I listen to all the time.

    Here’s what I came up with:

    Title

    		 Artist

    		 Album
    In The Days Of The Caveman

    		 Crash Test Dummies

    		 God Shuffled His Feet
    Ain’t Goin’ to Goa

    		 A3

    		 Exile On Coldharbor Lane
    Count ’em Up Queek

    		 2NU

    		 Ponderous
    Underground

    		 Ben Folds

    		 Ben Folds Five
    Short Skirt/Long Jacket

    		 Cake

    		 Comfort Eagle
    Rudie Can’t Fail

    		 The Clash

    		 London Calling
    Brick House

    		 Commodores

    		 Millennium Funk Party
    Tripping Billies

    		 Dave Matthews Band

    		 Crash
    You Better Be Doubtful

    		 The Housemartins

    		 The The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death
    **updated** Rotten World Blues

    		 Eels

    		 rotten world blues EP
    Glamour Boys

    		 Living Colour

    		 Pride
    Penguins

    		 Lyle Lovett

    		 I Love Everybody
    Birds Of A Feather

    		 Phish

    		 Story Of The Ghost
    Boll Weevil

    		 The Presidents of the United States of America

    		 The Presidents Of The United States Of America
    Shiny Happy People

    		 R.E.M.

    		 Out Of Time
    Stay Up Late

    		 Talking Heads

    		 Sand In The Vaseline (Disc 2)
    What Is Hip?

    		 Tower Of Power

    		 Millennium Funk Party
    Jack-Ass

    		 Beck

    		 Odelay
    Once In A Lifetime

    		 Talking Heads

    		 Sand In The Vaseline (Disc 1)
    **updated** That’s Not Really Funny

    		 Eels

    		 Souljacker

    updated I was listening to the CD in the car and realized that I Wanna Be A Witch, while really happy and bouncy, contains some profanity. This wouldn’t normally bother me, but the CD had to be Max-friendly too, so I’m making a new copy. I dropped that song, and added Rotten World Blues and That’s Not Really Funny, both by Eels. Good, jangly, rocky stuff.

  • The Unknowing Pirate

    I have been a very good Employee today. I deserve some kind of SuperEmployee sticker and a bad picture of me in a cheap frame hung on the wall in our temporary lobby that says, “Kevin’s One Super Employee”. I may go do that myself tonight with Max. We’ll make a “Kevin’s One Super Employee” plaque. Then, I’ll bring to work really early tomorrow morning and hang it up before anyone gets here. Maybe I should start with someone else so no one suspects me. Although, I think I’m the only person here who would do such a thing, and everyone knows it. I have a pirate flag up on my wall, ferpetessack.

    And to answer your next question, I have a pirate flag on my wall for a very good reason. I’ve been feeling extremely subversive lately. There’s usually a subversive undercurrent running through whatever I do. Recently, though, the undercurrent has become an undertorrent, and I just can’t help it. Maybe I’m feeling extra-subversive because my boss, and boss’s boss have both left in the past six weeks, and I’m feeling a little… grieved? Yeah, that’s as close as I can come to describing it. I lost the guy who hired me, protected our group from a lot of garbage, was in our corner the whole time, and made us better. I’ve also lost the best manager I’ve ever had. It’s kind of thrown me for a loop.

    I’m not quite sure what to do next. I still have my projects, the things that “make me go”, but I don’t have the support system I had last week. I don’t have a manager I can tell anything to, give her any problem, and compliant and she’ll go fight the battle, or filter the message appropriately. I have a crappy filter. I usually just come out and say it, which isn’t the most productive trait to possess at the moment.

    I’ve come to realize that I work best with a manager I can trust completely. I don’t want to have to play political games, and watch what I say with my direct manager. It’s too stressful, and makes work no fun at all. I have to be able to tell my manager what’s really going on, and have them do the same. If there’s no honesty in that relationship, there’s no trust. When there’s no trust, nothing productive happens. I’ve done pretty well so far in my career finding people I can trust, and good working relationships. The times I haven’t had that support system have been an absolute nightmare.

    I don’t know… this post started out really light and sunny, didn’t it? I was faking it. There’s nothing sunny or light going on here. I’m worried that I won’t find that working chemistry again, and I’ll just be working instead of having fun. I’m afraid I’ll spend my days playing politics instead of building cool stuff and challenging myself. I’ve done that already. I’d rather not go back to it. You know, maybe everything will be alright. Maybe it won’t. It’s the not knowing that’s killing me at the moment.

  • A Cure For The Blues

    Read a really funny and disgusting story about a worm.