Category: Kevin

I’ve realized that I have a gigantic set of blinders on. I can ignore stuff that doesn’t work or look good as long as I think it’s cool, or even worse, if I built it. It happens at work all the time, I’ve just been oblivious to it. This fabulous intranet I built for our group is cool. I built it. Therefore, I’ve reserved my biggest blinders for criticism of it. Now, I realize that the criticism is valid, and the site is really geeky (look at who built it) and not terribly easy to navigate.

At least I’m being big about it and admitting it. I had to send mail asking for help, “I know it sucks, how can I fix it.” What fun! I should leave the design stuff to the experts and just stick to building stuff and then make it look like they want. But, will pride let me? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, I’m wearing my humble little blinders and trying not to make much noise… let’s see how that works.

Why am I such a baby? Someone sent me a flame mail about our group’s site. It’s someone in the group, but not someone I work with. Basically, the trashed everything I’d done on the site for three months and said it was unusable. Normally, this wouldn’t bother me, and I’m not sure why this did. Is it because I spent a lot of time on it, built some amazingly cool AOLserver stuff, did it all myself, configured the box from scratch (installed RedHat, AOLserver, PostgreSQL, etc), and then pored over it every day for a month (in between my real work)? Or, was it the dismissive tone? “and I hate the studio site.. ” Wow, thanks, that was constructive, baby. That told me what you think is REALLY wrong with the site. Educated, and thorough in your criticism.

Or, wait, is it because it’s the Friday before Memorial Day and I’m the only person in my group left in the building, because I had to go to some stupid two hour meeting AFTER solving the world’s problems and continuing to make this company millions? Oh maybe… Maybe I just need a vacation and two Exedrin.

When will it end? I went to the doctor this morning because I keep coughing up lovely chunks of lung goo, and haven’t felt well in almost two weeks. What do I find out? I have a wonderfully advanced and special sinus infection and I need to lose 100 pounds. How scary is that? I’m to a point where losing 100 pounds will get me to a normal weight. Dammit, I’m fat! So, my goal is to lose 52 pounds a year for two years and get down to slightly fluffy instead of the round mound of rolling pudge. Ahhhh, what fun.

My wife thinks I’m beautiful… And that’s enough for me.

I’m very tired today, and tomorrow’s going to be worse. I have to get up really early to go substitute teach a class for church (Friday morning, you ask? Seminary for the high school kids. I have no idea how I did perfect attendance for four years – amazing).

Today? Let’s talk about being a “grown-up”. It’s hard stuff, especially when I still think “When I grow up, I wanna be…” all the time. I don’t FEEL like a grown up. But, when I look in the mirror, there it is, my grown up face staring back at me with the grey circles under my eyes and glasses. I’m married, have a son, own two cars, have a job with responsibility and pay a mortgage every month. I guess that qualifies me as a member of the adult club. It’s not what I expected. I thought I’d be wise, and know how to do things. I’m not, and I don’t.

This is all stemming from a realization I had a little while ago. I realized that who I am now is probably who I’ll be for the rest of my life. I always thought, deep down, that there would be some great awakening where I would suddenly feel mature and a part of the great flow of grown ups in the world. I figured I had time to be stupid and lazy a little while longer. Now, I’ve realized I didn’t have all that time, and that I’m pretty much the same guy I was when I was 19, just slower, fatter and with more stuff to do every day. I’m no more industrious or “together” now than I was then. I still have the same problems with time management, responsibility and authority I had then. I still feel I’m “missing something”. Like a part that makes the adult me wasn’t included in the original package. The real problem is I don’t know what that part is, or how to fix it.

This all sounds pretty bad and unhappy. It’s not. It’s just puzzling. I’ve been reflecting on decisions I’ve made, the experiences that got me to this point, and wondering how it all happened like it did. I truly like where I am. I love my family. I like my job (love it some days). I am content with who I am at its core. But, there’s still that nagging feeling that something’s not there that should be.

Ok, all this navel gazing is tedious. I’m done for now…

(preface: I know I said I’d continue the Tucson story, but I don’t feel like it. Get over it)

I’ve decided something. I don’t have enough uncles. I have one that I have any contact with, and well, that’s just not enough. My wife has a ton of them. There’s something cool about watching them all together. Her dad has four brothers and two sisters, who I now see more often than my own solitary uncle. They’re all funny, slightly raunchy (in a Sunday-old-man kind of way, stuff you grandma might blush at, but nothing really awful) and narcoleptic. One uncle fell asleep mid-sentence at Thanksgiving dinner a couple years ago. I’m straying a bit, but you get the idea. There are even the in-law uncles, Norm and Watts (first name, not last), who are great too. That’s a grand total of 6 semi-uncles I have now. I love them to death (well, most of them). But, they’re not MY uncles. I get them by association.

We’ve gone to visit them in Michigan a couple times now, and they all came to Tucson for our wedding. I love seeing this giant nuclear family together. I just wish my side of the family were more like that. Maybe it will once the other kids go and start families, and we become the aunts and uncles (one way being the oldest sucks).

Back to my original point of not having enough uncles. Uncles are fun. Uncles do cool things. Uncles should be good for embarrassing stories about your parents. I have one uncle who I don’t talk to enough, and doesn’t seem to dish the dirt on my mom (I think because he knows she could kill him even though she’s 5’6″ and he’s 6’4″). Uncles should also be good for advice. You should be able to go to your uncles for manly advice about things you wouldn’t ask your dad about. And here’s what I realized today, I want Garrison Keilor to be my uncle. I listen to Prairie Home Companion whenever I’m in the car on Saturday night, and sometimes on Sunday mornings, and his voice is always so wise and comforting, even when it’s funny. I read his column @ Salon.com, and he says wise, comforting, funny, uncle-y things to the people who write in. He seems like a good guy to go to dinner with. And who can ever have enough people to enjoy going to dinner with?

Nope, I didn’t almost forget today. I read my daily dose o’ news @ Salon while eating my fajita burger from the cafeteria, and here I am, right on time.

Wow, this is really uncomfortable. There was about 5 minutes there between “right on time” and “Wow”. What do I tell you? What can I say that won’t come back and bite me in the butt? Not much, I’ve come to learn. So, let’s do a little history, shall we?
I’ve been on the web since early 95, and have worked for the same company (the giant blue triangle) for almost my entire adult life. I started there in May of ’95, in tech support (which I may talk about at some point, along with some other weird stories from that time period if I get brave). Now, I write frontend/middleware code for one of the largest search engines on the planet. I wonder almost daily about how I got here, why I never went back to school, and what it was about the job that kept me there for so long, when I SHOULD have quit and gone back to school. Not that any of that really matters now. I’m 26, married, have one kid, two cars, a mortgage and am starting to go grey. So, what does thinking about any of this do for me? It’s kind of fun, really.
I loved my first year in tech support. I learned about modems, Win95, Mac System 7.5 (and its babies .1 .2 and .3), and all about how things get gummed up. I took calls from people all over the country, calling about things that had nothing to do with our software, calling about their kids’ saying bad words in chat rooms, and how they HAD to get their e-mail, but couldn’t because their account had been cancelled.

I also met some amazing people (and got in lots of trouble for a good little Mormon boy). Some of them are my best friends, even though we’re 3k miles apart. They helped me grow up and realize that my parents weren’t always right, and that my politics were WAY over in Rush-territory and needed a correction (not through preaching, just because I got to observe people that weren’t like me). I’m rambling now, but it was a real system shock to meet my first lesbian, openly gay man, and wow, lots of other people I’d never met before (transgen guy, my first bisexual couple – they were funny, etc, etc ,etc). The list goes on, and I figured out they’re not the evil people I was brought up to think they were (not through preaching, just by example). I miss that. Here at the “Corporate Headquarters”, everyone’s so apparently normal. I don’t see the variety I did in tech support, and it’s kind of boring.

Tomorrow… Early life online, or How E-Mail Almost Got Me Fired.

I’m starting to go grey. I admit it. I’m 26 and have this nice grey spot on my right temple. I always figured that I would lighten and eventually go white like my dad’s doing (he’s 48, and I didn’t notice until last year… lucky him). Welp, here I am, at 26 with a grey spot the size of a quarter. My brother, Tim, and I always talked about what would happen if we started losing our hair, and I always said I wouldn’t care. I’d shave my head before I’d dye out the grey, or wear a toup. Now that I’m here, though, I’m not so sure. I’m definitely not losing hair, cuz I have to go to the hair-cuttin’ lady’s place every 4 weeks, or I get what I affectionately call “preacher hair”. But grey? Come ON!! I’m not even mature yet. So, here’s my plan. If I go super-grey, like all over, I’m dying my hair Kool-Aid Blue.