Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

Part of my job at the current company? Upgrading a database with scant documentation (management quite intelligently RIF’d the sole developer on the project just before it was tested and deployed. Problem is, there’s no documentation on how to upgrade / test / deploy).

Reminds me a lot of the reason that I quit my last job. This time, I have less confidence that I can pull off the upgrade without screwing the system over. Mind you, this time I’m not as invested in the problem as I was last time. On the other hand, this time it affects an external customer. Maybe I’ll have to quit simply to save our customer from ourselves.

Public books and private books… I like it…

We’re now on Skype. Not a big deal for our American, cell-phone enabled friends, but our furner-friends or those with land-lines may find it useful to use to contact us. We’re registered under our normal email addresses.

I’d fix all the pseudo-rotaries in Massachusetts. Don’t forget to vote for me.

Making decisions seems to be getting harder as I get older. I tend to worry more about the paths not taken.

Are the decisions that I have to make tougher? Is it tougher thinking for two instead of one? Am I just losing my backbone and getting wimpy with age? Have I been seduced by the American dream, and worry about decisions since I fear that the wrong one may keep me from it? Am I feeling jittery because I’ve now seen the results, good or bad, of more of my important decisions?

I don’t know.

Maybe what I’m thinking of as “agonizing over a decision” is really me learning to give careful consideration to all facets of the problem. Maybe I have to just accept how the process of making a decision has changed for me.

Who knows…

One of my goals for this (birthday based) year is to get healthy / in shape. Obviously, this is made up of a bunch of subgoals… OK… fine… a long list of subgoals.

One of the subgoals is to run a 5K with Erin before my next birthday. Today: 3.3 miles on the treadmill (in an abysmally slow 35 minutes). Not quite the same as running outdoors, but the first recorded time I’ve been able to run that far for that long without stopping.

Another subgoal… actually a desired side-effect… is to lose weight. So far, again, since my birthday, down 13.5lbs to a round number. 15lbs to go.

As an only semi-related side-note:

• It’s amazing how motivating a lack of focus can be.
• It’s amazing how motivating a good sense of focus can be.

I guess it’s all in the variance.

Our recent trip to Egypt is, in all likelyhood, the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to how we handle our photographs. Dina took 135 digital pictures before her camera broke. I took 33 rolls of film… about 900 pictures. Just developing the film (no printing, no scanning) costs a pretty penny (about $3.50 a roll). Next, we have to figure out whether we want to get them printed ($0.39 a picture, before bulk discount), scanned ($6.95 a roll), or whether we want to do it ourselves.

Of course, doing it ourselves also costs money. Getting Jim’s negative scanner to work is proving problematic, especially since we’re running WinXP and using a $70 SCSI to USB Adaptor. Our options are to continue trying to get this explicitly unsupported setup to work, to build an outdated computer running Win98 with a SCSI card, or to buy a good film scanner for about $550, or mediocre film scanner for about $230. From there, we pick and choose pictures for printing, and find a place online that’ll print for about $0.15 a print.

All this points to the fact that at least one of two things needs to happen:

• It’s time to switch to digital. The problem is that a Digital Rebel still costs about $1,000. I’m not sure I want to spend that much money on a technology that is improving so rapidly.
• It’s time to graduate from being a shutterbug, randomly snapping pictures and hoping they turn out well, to an amateur photographer, where I carefully consider how my images are going to turn out.

Update Gosh we’re luddites sometimes. SnapFish will let you pre-pay 1,000 prints for $100. They’ll also let you pre-pay 50 rolls of film for $100 including 1 set of prints, uploading, and developing. Wonder if they’ll take negatives?

src=”/pictures/tokyo-2005-03/Japan-145-of-396-Smooth-Yumi-smiling-in-sun-2005-03-26-to-2005-04-03_small.jpg”
class=”alignright”
style=”width : 150px; height : 99px;”
alt=”Photograph: Smooth & Yumi In The Sun, Tokyo, Japan, March-April 2005, © Nick Varacalli.”
title=”Smooth & Yumi In The Sun, Tokyo, Japan, March-April 2005, © Nick Varacalli.”
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A while back, I once again demonstrated my total lack of knowledge of American idiom. It all started innocently enough…

We’re organizing a group trip to sushi. I ask Smooth & Yumi if they are coming. Smooth responds:

Yumi and I are in like Flynn.

At this point, I tell Dan and Dina, who are lounging around the apartment, that Smooth & Yumi are out.

About 15 minutes and a few google maps searches later, I confess to my amazing lack of MA geography knowledge and my google-ineptitude, and ask Dan & Dina if they know where Flynn, MA is.
They don’t know.
I assume that Smooth did something like shortening “Fucking Lynn” to “Flynn”.

Dan, Dina, Jim, and I make our way to the restaurant. As we’re counting people, we come to two different numbers. Jim thinks 10 people are coming. I think 8 people are. We start naming people. When we get to Smooth & Yumi, Jim and I disagree. I think they’re, like, out, because they’re in, like, Flynn, wherever that is.

At this point, Dan puts 2 and 2 together and figures out why I asked him where Flynn was.

In my defence, Dina didn’t know about the “In like Flynn” turn of phrase either.

Of course, this was much funnier when it happened over a month ago.

Since then, of course, our friends have been busy researching. The internet has
various
different
interpretations
on the
topic.

One of the things that gets to me, is when two people have different expectations about what a friendship (or any relationship for that matter) entails. It can be a difficult and painful thing when the expectations are skewed, either initially, or as they evolve that way over time and due to circumstance. I’ve been in the situation enough over the years to both feel and cause inadvertent hurt. Oddly, I never seem to learn. I get hurt (and, much more unfortunately, I’m assuming I hurt in return) just as much as I always have, if not more than ever. Dina always told me that this was part of why my friendships work (and don’t work) the way they do.

Time to put the skewed expectations to rest yet again, and move on toward the future, whatever that may hold.

The good news this time is that I may actually have more clarity of vision than I ever had before, which should draw my eyes forward to the future instead of back to the past as they are wont to do.

On the way home, and upon getting home, I thought about disruptive change.

All that thinking made me realize… I think I’m all set right now.

A while back, I noted that I really liked and felt welcomed at a certain social group. A friend of mine, who is near universally acclaimed for being able to get along with anyone and everyone, said that she felt that the people were a bit cold to her. At this point, I realized (on my own, or by picking up on what my friend was really trying to tell me) that I was getting different treatment since the social group was composed mostly of women. I think this is the first time that (I’ve noticed that) I’ve received preferential treatment due to my gender in a social situation. Odd feeling.

Morgenmuffel is a German word that means, approximately, “not a morning person”. This wonderful little word gleaned, surprisingly, from a football article by way of a German cheerleader’s bio. With Daniel‘s help, we’ve decided that “my little not a morning person”, as a term of endearment for Dina and I to use on each other, is “min morgenmuffele”.

Life Tip (too specific to go into Life’s Lessons): If you’re meeting with stoner clients early in the morning make sure to give them coffee before they go into a meeting if you need them to function.

Overheard in an office, account manager trying to collect on a bill:

I know you’re broke, why don’t you go hold up a liquor store? What do you want from me?

Due to the fact that they RIF’d everyone that wrote and maintained the application, I’m being asked to support a largely undocumented application written in VB6 and C++. I’d vowed that I’d quit next time I was asked to work on a classic VB application. Now what? Who knows.

Back from vacation. Am burnt out on people after having to deal with the cross-culture communication issues for 2 weeks. Cross cultural communication seemed an order of magnitude harder than Japan. I think I’ll need a month or so to recover. Unfortunately, no rest yet. Came back to our apartment, and the renovations are only ½ finished, so we can’t really set things up the way we like them.

Meanwhile, on the work front, ½ of the development team has given notice. I’ll see how that’s working out on Monday or Tuesday (I’m currently unsure as to whether we have the day off or not).

I’ll write a trip report and post some pictures, time permitting.