Category: Kevin

Monkeybutt, and the joys of being 10. It reminds me of walking home from school in Iceland. The school and our apartment house were about 150 yards apart across a rocky field (they call it “tundra”, which is the perfect word for it). There were a couple of us who went to the school (A.T. Mahan K-12) and lived in our little apartment house or the one next door. In the winter, the wind would whip across that field between the houses and the school at about 30 miles an hour. To combat this, my little group of friends made a leanto out of rocks about halfway across the field. We’d run for the windbreak, collapse into it and catch our breath for the rest of the trip. It felt like an odyssey every day. Mr. Wilson wishes he was 10. I wish I was 7, sitting in the little leanto all bundled up, puffing steam laughing with my little brother.

It’s one of those days where I feel like a punching bag. It’s to the point that I expect people to say “Yeah, I suck, but that’s ok because Kevin will make up for it and make it aaaaa-aaaall better.”

I think I plan on failing, just screwing up royally just once. Maybe they’ll leave me alone then.

In the same vein as Alison’s List, the five people I’d most like to have dinner with (they have to still be alive) Who would you like to have dinner with?.

1. Garrison Keilor
2. John Stockton
3. Philip Greenspun (which isn’t fair, because I have had dinner with him)
4. Bela Fleck
5. William H. Macy

    

Hello, my name is Kevin. I am a compulsive upgrader. I admit it. I like to have the latest software, even if it means compiling it myself. There, I said it. I’m now in the process of building the latest Mozilla release for my new Mac (running YellowDog, of course). I also downloaded AOLserver and the latest PostgreSQL driver from OpenACS. Why? I’m a chronic upgrader. Gotta do it.

Today’s been a crazy day, so I decided to wander down to the comp’ny store and grab a bag of Gummi Bears. They’re the same brand I used to eat when I was little. They triggered a childhood memory. Here it is:

When I was 5, my dad was stationed at Ramstein, Germany. We used to go shopping “on the economy” all the time (that means not at the BX or Commissary). I remember this knick knack store in Kaiserslattern that used to hand kids little bags of Gummi Bears as they walked in the door to keep their little hands occupied and off the merchandise. It was a great idea. My little brother and I loved going to that store.

They had bins of cheap plastic toys at ground level that we’d sift through while mom perused the nutcrackers, cuckoo clocks and other German trinkets. We’d usually get to pick out one to take home with us (after mom paid for it of course, which never crossed our minds back then). It was a great little world I lived in back then, with bins of plastic cars, airplanes and animals immersed in the bonging and chirping of a thousand cheap cuckoo clocks.

I went out with the guys last night. Yeah, me. Do you believe it? It was supposed to be a going-away shindig for my manager who’s retiring and moving off the Missouri to do nothing (that’s what he says anyway… don’t believe him). It ended up being a congratulations party for the guy who took his place. Whatever. It was just an excuse to go out, dish dirt, watch people drink and flirt and laugh.

I haven’t done anything like that in a long long time. Not since Tucson and the TV show. It was great. I work with great people, and they’re fun to hang out with. Now, if only I can get rid of the smell of smoke…

I have a lot of thoughts about what’s going on in the world, but there are currently too many people using their first amendment rights at the moment. When they’re done, I’ll say something important. Until then, it’s trite drivel and useless crap about my life! I know, you can’t contain your joy, can you?

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 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.

Went to the doctor this morning. Sinus infection is gone, but I’m still fat. Yup, it’s official. I got a chart and everything. It’s time to get less fat. Why? Because I made a startling realization the other day: You don’t see a lot of fat old guys. No, really, they all die before they get old. I don’t want to do that, so I’m going to lose weight. It sucks, but it’s got to be done. So, look out for “how less fat is Kevin than he was when he started” updates periodically (for the two people who read this thing).