What is it about accomplishment that’s totally re-energizing? After my brilliance this week, I feel like working again. I don’t feel like doing nothing, and grudgingly doing my job. I feel like doing it in new and fantastic ways, with plastic spoons. No, really, I’m amped. I think this new “get cool results by getting idiots to learn just some html tags” is really cool. It should save me from having to do things all the time, and I’ll really only have to write the tags once, make sure they work, and then unleash them on an unsuspecting world. Sure, I may be writing myself out of a job, but I’m tired of doing the same thing every day anyway. Without giving away too much, I’ll try to keep y’all updated on my quest to replace myself with HTML. It’ll work, I swear on Tim Berners-Lee’s shiny bald spot.
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I am just blown away
I am just blown away by this image. I reminds me of the little characters my brother, Tim, and I used to draw in high school. We’d draw a little person form, and then only fill in parts of the person, so they ended as these humanoid sculptures. It sounds a lot cooler than we ever got them to turn out. This is cool… but, so is the rest of the site.
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Random Notes From the Underbelly
Just because I’m a glutton for punishment, I watched Six Feet Under again. Yes, the one that ruined me on Sunday. Why? Jen hadn’t seen it, and I talked it up so much, she had to. So, I sat there and steeled myself against what I knew was coming. I got a little choked up, but no actual tears this time. Yes!
You know what’s sad though? Jen didn’t cry at all, didn’t even snorffle once! I was amazed. Her explanation was that she had detached herself from it and it didn’t get to her. Yeah, well, it got to me, lady… it got me good.
I’m still basking in the glow of my genius from yesterday. So much so that I’m not even thinking about any rumored impending layoffs.
Max digs couscous!! I went a little nuts at the grocery store the other night and got couscous and hummus and other weirdities. The hummus was assy, but that couscous was yummy. Max used his little spoon on the little pasta and fed himself until we had to stop him. He’s a funny kid.
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Days of Caffeine and Genius
Yes folks, you heard it here first. I am a genius. I rule absolutely with an iron fist and Burger King crown. Baby, I am IT. I feel so much better. I took something written for a different web server, using a completely different language and underlying technology, and ported it to AOLserver. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you may bow before your leader and say, “Kevin, you’re the greatest!” You know you wanna…
And moving on… I think the season of Big Brother is miles ahead of last summer’s snorefest. The evil inside that house is eeee-eeeexcellent to behold. Everyone’s playing the game with a Richard Hatch-like perversity, and I love it. Will especially. I hope he’s one of the final two just so everyone can stand in awe of his evilness. Yes ma’am, that’s one slimy customer.
And one more thing… Max and I came up with a new word last night: Doodootecque: not sure what it means, but it sure is fun to say. It made Max laugh and laugh last night, so I think I’ll keep saying it. I’ll define it later.
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CHICKENHEAD: A cure for bad
CHICKENHEAD: A cure for bad days.
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Let’s Delay the Pain!
Yeah, that’s a good idea. So, the big layoffs that all the media outlets were reporting haven’t happened yet. What fun. I even came in early today to be here when it happened. Why? I hate walking in on the middle of a disaster. I like to be there when it happens. It just makes dealing with it easier. I missed the last one, and didn’t get to say good-bye. If it’s going to happen, I want to see it.
As someone said to me at an airport, “Corporations are bastards”. The people who work there do their jobs and are usually decent folk. Somehow, when viewed as a single entity, something bastardly takes over. I don’t know if it comes from management, or if it just happens. I give up trying to explain it. Just make it go away…
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Ruined Six Feet Under ruined
Ruined Six Feet Under ruined me last night. In the first two minutes, I knew what was going to happen. I wanted to turn the TV off, run upstairs and check on Max, even though I know he’s almost two and that SIDS happens between birth and 18 months. The very thought that something like that could happen was enough. I cried.
Then, when Frederico had to embalm that three-week old baby and held his still little hand, I cried again. It was just so unfair that this young father (well, he’s the same age I am), who has one child and another imminent, had to deal with the idea of a dead child just stabbed me in the heart.
And the end of the show, when they had their own baby by c-section, JUST like we did, and the look on his face when he heard his new son cry for the first time – I lost it completely. I sat there alone in the dark with the credits rolling blubbering like a child.
I love that show. I love that it makes me feel. Most TV is absolute garbage. So much so that watching TV on Sunday (Sex and the City and Six Feet Under) makes the rest of the week painful. Jen mentioned that yesterday afternoon. She’s so smart.
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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.
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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.
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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.
