Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • I don’t want to do this

    I don’t want to do this… I don’t want my blog to become one of those “I hate my job” daily tirades, but this week, I do. I’m tired of feeling overworked and under siege by project managers. How many project managers does ONE project need? Now, instead of dealing with one person who asks me questions and makes me do stuff, I deal with 5 or 6, which greatly increases my pissed-off quotient (by a magnitude of 5 or 6), and makes my job that much harder. Stupid stupid stupid.

    On TOP of that, I have to deal with impending doom, and the possibility that one of my best friends at work might get carried away by it. That pisses me off. So, to sum up, this week has pissed me off. I feel like I’m on the edge of some emotional breakdown, and will just kick the next person who walks by squarely in the nuts.

    On a happy notes, during one of my mental health breaks this week, I came up with this, which I think is really cool, and I’d do it, but I know how much people hate pop-up windows. But, I love how it’s aligned, and the TV shows up over the menu on the right, and the logo is behind the text. Yeah, it’s cool. I rule, now go away before I kill your testicles with my boot.

  • I used to fancy myself an artist

    I used to fancy myself an artist. I considered becoming a medical illustrator, and held this dream that I could become a fantastically popular (if not talented) comic book artist. I took an advanced figure drawing class my freshman year of college, and got an A. I thought that’s what I really wanted to do. I was sure of it.

    What I’ve realized in my 8 years since that year is that I’m not ever going to be a medical illustrator, or a comic book artist in any other arena than my imagination. I still doodle all over my legal pad during meetings, and every once in a while I come up with something worth looking at again. I drew this fat kid in sledding clothes dreaming of snow during a meeting one day. It’s still magnet-attached to my filing cabinet at work.

    Dreams die. The dreams of children and teenagers die slow deaths in the journey to adulthood. I don’t want to be an artist now, not really.

    I write code. I write code all day long. I write stuff that does fabulous things like return search results in readable formats. I’ve written calendars, message boards, file libraries, databases full of useful information and lots of other widgets and tools. I never dreamed of being a code-writer when I was a child. I wanted to be a mad scientist at one point, and I guess this is close. I love taking things and turning them into products that no one could have imagined them turning into when they were conceived (like Tcl – did you know you can do amazingly Mad things with Tcl? Bet you didn’t).

    It’s my dream to build cool stuff. I dream of building the perfect tool. Someone told me of an april fool’s joke they pulled. They worked in an office of lawyers. They were the computer support guy. All the lawyers bitched and moaned about the tools they had. So, on 4/1, this guy put a big red button on everyone’s screen that said “Your Job”. That’s what I want to build… the big red Your Job button. It’ll be in Tcl… just you wait.

  • Please, go visit The Norm!

    Please, go visit The Norm! It’s a comic strip, and it’s mmm-mmm-damn good. Think “Calvin grows up”… yeah, that’s a better description than I sent to the author.

    Oh yeah, one other thing. I love e-mail. In the past, I was always squeamish about sending praise to the creators of sites that I like. Why? I don’t know. I think I’m repressed. Well, recently, I’ve decided to try to counter those fears and send e-mail to those people I find on the web who do their thing and do it well. The Norm’s creator, Michael Jantze is one of those, and he answered back! So, fear nothing! Send that e-mail! Tell the people who’re doing a good job, “Yeah, you rock, keep it up!” It’ll make their day, and make your’s too.

  • You know what project managers

    You know what project managers are good for? No, really, I have no idea… I’m asking.

  • Ok, back to the Canadian

    Ok, back to the Canadian thing. There are now more members of AOL than there are people living in Canada. Does everyone just leave when they reach a certain age? Do Canadians not breed? Is it a migratory thing? What is it?

  • Attack of the Clones???? Huh?

    Attack of the Clones Huh? Ok, so, the name of Star Wars Episode 2 is going to be Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. It’s apparently about the Clone Wars mentioned way back in Star Wars (you know, the one that came out first). Why not just call it Star Wars: The Clone Wars? Other than repetetive, at least it doesn’t sound like a bad Ed Wood movie, starring Jesse Helms and Trent Lott as the intrepid CloneBusters. Lucas has gone soft in the head, I swear.

  • Do you have a Mac?

    Do you have a Mac? If you do, and you’re not sure what to do with it, why not try Yellow Dog Linux? Consider this a testimonial. I love YellowDog! I’ve used LinuxPPC and Mandrake on my poor old Powerbook, and YellowDog is bar far the easiest to set up and use. It’s based on RedHat 7 (so it’s reasonably up-to-date) is easy to update (thanks, yup!), fairly easy to configure, and runs like a champ. You can even dual and triple boot between it, OS 9 and, if you’re crazy, OS X. Does it GET any more fun than that? I thought not.

  • Did you know there are

    Did you know there are only 30 Million people who live in Canada? Heck, New York could kick the whole country’s ass if they felt like it (there are ~50 million New Yorkers, state that is). That shocked me. I always thought Canada was bigger than that.

    It does make one wonder about the great number of Canadians in entertainment, though, doesn’t it? Just think of the list… it’s long! From Ed Grimley to Captain Kirk, our few (well, fewer than I thought) friends from the far North have infiltrated our media product, hawking their Canuck Wares. Be wary, America, be very very wary.

  • I can’t believe I never

    I can’t believe I never told you about Henryk Gorecki. His Symphony Number 3 is devastatingly haunting and beautiful. Once you hear it, you’ll probably remember hearing it before. It’s one of those pieces of music they use in movies (like Fearless and Wit) in the epiphany scene, when it all becomes clear.

    My friend Sean introduced me to it in High School, and now I listen to it when I need to mellow out, or am feeling like there’s nowhere else to turn. Dawn Upshaw’s pained soprano, the strings in the background – it just makes life worth living again. Go get the version with Dawn Upshaw as the soloist. There are others out there, but none of them match the beauty of that one.

  • I aspire to be OpenBrackets

    I aspire to be OpenBrackets (not female living in France, just that good a writer). In my little world of rapid-fire technical e-mails and instant messages, I’ve forgotten how to take my time and write well. I write quickly, with the sole purpose of getting whoever it is I’m answering to leave me alone (well, mostly – not you, sweetie). Here, I want to write differently. I want to take my time and write things that can be savored, or at least read with more interest than an e-mail that will be read and then discarded to the inbox dustbin.

    I’m not there, and it will take a lot of practice to get there. I’m just starting to remember that I have a voice that comes out when I write. I’d forgotten all about it. Wish me luck…