Things that might be decidedly odd…

On Broken Builds

While writing my last entry (at around 2pm), I thought my build would finally be fixed soon. Unfortunately, after about 2.5 hours more of futzing with things, it STILL wasn’t working. Fed up, I started a full debug rebuild (which takes about 4 hours usually) and decided to go home for dinner. I stopped by the grocery store on my way back and then prepared a nice dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. Afterwards, I finally got around to baking the banana bread I’d been meaning to make for a while. The bananas were super ripe. They were so nasty, I should have taken a picture in fact.

Afterwards, I got back to work (by remotely logging in from home) and about 20 minutes ago managed to finish the milestone I had planned for today. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish the major parts of the feature up by tomorrow some time.

My arm is still hurting from the shot I got today. I recall the other shots in the series hurting a bit, but not quite as much as this one. Still, the pain isn’t that bad (I don’t think the nurse did anything wrong, for example), but it does annoy me periodically. I also got a voice mail at work sometime around 7:30pm from Rite Aid, so the doctor must have called the prescription I missed in. I need to call them back though because they need more information (probably my insurance info or something). The best part is that my voice mail goes through my work email, showing up as an email with a WMA attachment containing the actual voice mail. That means I can listen to my voice mail without having to dial into some insane phone tree. I just check my email and download the attachment. Very cool.

New Doctor and Broken Builds on Monday

This morning, I walked down for my appointment with a doctor over on first hill. If you recall earlier, I’d finally found a gay-friendly practice that was taking new patients after some searching. Anyhow, the walk didn’t turn out to be as far as I expected and I even arrived a bit early. After the obligatory paperwork, I went through the usual rigamarole of having my vitals measured. Then I talked to the doctor, who it turns out is also named Jeff. He seemed friendly enough. We went through my medical history and then he did a standard exam. I think the last time I had an official physical was back at age 12 or something. Still, everything looked normal, although apparently I have severe reflexes and these small light splotches I’ve had on my thigh for years are probably some sort of innocuous fungus easily treated with a cream. I then had to give some blood, get the last Hep A/B shot and a TB test (recommended after returning from Nicaragua). I then left after asking the nurse if I was done, but then later realized I never got the prescription for the cream. I’ll have to call about that at some point.

Overall, I was satisfied with the way things went. The doctor and many of his patients are gay, which is helpful because he’s aware of certain health concerns more specific to gay men. For example, he recommended I get a Hep B antibody test in a few months to make sure the vaccine had worked on me, because MSMs are much more likely to have exposure to the disease than other people. Also, he brought up STD/HIV tests right away. I don’t need to take those right now, but it’s good to know he’s on top of that.

Right now, my right arm is seriously sore and moderately incapacitated from the blood sample and two shots. On my way into work, I had lunch over at the cafeteria in building 17, which was a nice change. I’ve resolved to eat in every cafeteria at some point, just to explore a bit. When I finally got into work, I found out that my build had failed on Friday night. Worse still, something went terribly wrong as the whole thing got hung up by a disfunctional program that wanted to be debugged. Usually, if one of the many projects fails, it’ll just be skipped, but in the case the failure stopped the whole process. Hence, now I can’t get much work done until I can rebuild the bare essentials. I really need to get in the habit of checking on my builds before I come into work. Ten minutes on Saturday morning might have saved me hours today.

Cowboys and Angels

I just got done watching Cowboys and Angels. I must say I didn’t know much about this movie at all before watching it, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s an Irish film, which is something I haven’t seen in a while either. For a foreign film, it was decidedly upbeat and left me with a happy feeling, although it certainly had its sadder and more tense moments as well. This one will be going back tomorrow too, which means I should have some new interesting stuff to watch in the next couple days.

Easy Weekend

First, my blog has been down all weekend because of server problems. Unfortunately, it was my provider’s fault and not something within my control.

Saturday morning, I decided I was going to watch Kinsey and return it that afternoon so that I could get a new movie sooner. Generally, I liked the film. Informative, entertaining and some male full frontal nudity to boot. I then mailed the movie back and dropped off my car insurance refund check (took only 3 days to get instead of the 6-8 weeks that had originally told me). After that, I worked up the motivation to go for a jog. I took the same route I’d taken earlier in the week (up to and around Volunteer Park). It’s a good route that takes just about the right amount of time, but it’s fairly uphill (more of a workout I suppose). After crossing 10th Ave E on Prospect, I noticed there was snow on the ground. On Friday, while driving to work, I noticed there was some slush on the side of the road in places. Apparently, it had actually snowed that night. There was actually still snow in the park and the surrounding neighborhood. It’s somewhat surprising, since there wasn’t any snow down where I live. Heck, I didn’t even know it had snowed until afterwards I guess.

I got back home, showered and cooked up some dinner. I ate while watching Christiane F. Netflix said it came in German with English subtitles, but when I popped it in there were no subtitles. Just a German or English (dubbed) audio track. Hence, I watched the whole thing in German without subtitles. Sometimes my German gets a little rusty though and it was hard to follow the 1970s West Berlin teenager drug culture talk. Still, I got through it fine as I’d read the book (in German) a few years ago. The movie was good, but not as good as I had hoped. Maybe the idea of 14 year old heroin addicts prostituting themselves out on the mean streets of West Berlin isn’t quite as shocking the second time around. Being a movie, they also left out certain things from the book, especially concerning the main character’s attempts to get cleaned up. I distinctly remember there being Scientologists trying to cure her in the book, for example.

Today I got up really late (around noon), although I’m not entirely sure why I slept so long (I get rolling back over and going to sleep). I was browsing around Myspace and on a whim decided to search for people I graduated high school with. I friended this girl Tina I knew in high school and to a lesser extent in college (she transfered at some point into Cal, but we never hung out much). She wrote me back almost right away, which was cool. It’s so interesting to hear where different people have ended up. She’s living in Texas, going to law school now.

I had intended to go to the grocery store today, but it just hasn’t really happened. My car is parked further away than the store anyways, so I’d have to walk over there (about 2/3 of a mile each way). It’s not that far, but it’ll take a while. I think I may go in the morning instead before my doctor’s appointment at 10:30am.

Capitol Hill High

Tonight was a second attempt at seeing this play we had intended to see yesterday, but arrived to late at. Keenan, several of his friends (this time Corey, Michael and Dawn–I hope I got those names right) and I met up for dinner at Julia’s on Broadway and E Thomas. I enjoyed the food and the waitress was friendly, even it seemed like she hadn’t been waitressing for very long. We finally made it over to the Capitol Hill Arts Center to see the first episode of a play called Capitol Hill High. The venue was interesting in that it’s probably the only theater I’ve been to that’s 21+ as it’s attached to a bar. The show was quite entertaining. There were lots of Seattle and Capitol Hill references made, but I think I actually got quite a few them. Many of the references had to do with digs at hipsters, which I’ve found over the years transcend geography.

A Social Thursday Evening

I haven’t been going out a whole lot since I moved to Seattle, but when I have, it’s always been on the weekend. Tonight I had a nice social evening on a Thursday night. I got into work at a fairly decent hour and was very focused on my tasks all day. I’ve noticed I tend to work better when I have several things to be donig at the same time. So while I was working on my feature, I was also working on checking in some fixes I originally did last week and trying to get to the bottom of this one bug from yesterday that is specific to Mongolian and Word. Keenan (peer mentor), Thomas (UNC alum) and I had lunch today too. It was nice to see Thomas again and nice to mix up who I eat lunch with.

After work, Keenan and I went back into the city to check out this gay Starbucks thing at Purr. We didn’t get there until towards the end of the official time, but the place was quite hopping. As usual, I felt very out of place, surrounded by people who all knew a few people there while I knew nobody except Keenan. Fortunately, Keenan knew several people and introduced me, which was helpful. Still, I tend to feel very self-conscious in such situations.

First, I realize how utterly horrible my fashion sense is compared to most gay men which makes me feel like I don’t fit in and am being negatively judged. I know I’m probably unrealistically paranoid about such things and should just get over it, but it’s hard. Years ago, I knew I dressed in a cheap and dissheveled manner but I just didn’t care. Over the past few years, I’ve begun to care more and have taken steps to at least dress presentably (clean clothes that fit and are not falling apart, shaving every day) at all times. At the same time I’m opposed to the idea of following fashion trends and especially spending lots of money to do so. That probably comes from my general dislike of shopping for clothes or shoes or maybe it’s the other way around. Hence, I don’t like how I dress, but won’t do anything about it. That’s an internal conflict that I suppose I need to work through.

Second, I get skittish about eye contact. Generally, I like to look and see who’s around when I’m out in public, but in this kind of situation, I see other guys doing it to me too. It weirds me out slightly when I see people looking in my direction (not that there are usually so many of them) and then both of us avert our glances. In the same vein, I’ll talk with other guys and have serious difficulty maintaining eye contact. For some reason, I feel this urge (which I act on) to constantly look away. Perhaps it’s some sort of nervous reaction that gets amplified when I’m in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people.

That said, I had a nice time and I’d do it again. I just need to weather the discomfort now, knowing that in the future it won’t bother me nearly as much.

From there, we met up with some of Keenan’s friends for dinner at a nearby restaurant. After some drinks, I ordered food. Although it didn’t taste bad, it didn’t taste all that great either especially considering the price. I think I should have picked something different as everybody else’s food looked a lot better. The waiter was really bitchy to me when I asked where the bathroom was, which pissed me off. Look, I just wanted to know where the bathroom was, not ridiculed because I didn’t notice the large doors off the main dining room with ‘M’ and ‘W’ on them. I probably would have stiffed him on the tip, but he sorta put up with us sitting around for an extended period of time, not ordering food until later, having something like 7 separate checks and just generally being more difficult customers than usual. Still, I had a nice time meeting some new and interesting people. Definitely worth the minor frustrations of the food and wait staff.

From there, we had intended to catch a play. Unfortunately, we were running late and the play started on time. Because it was only an hour long, it was too late and we missed it. Keenan invited us all back to his apartment instead where he assured us he had lots of drinks. When we got there, there were a lot of different kinds of bottles, but nothing to mix them with. The intent was good though and I don’t think anybody had trouble with some simple drinks in a relaxed, non-loud atmosphere.

All in all, a pretty good night, especially for a Thursday.

The Late Schedule

After staying up late last night, I of course got out of bed fairly late this morning. Being that it was Wednesday, I knew I’d be working late so I drove into work instead of taking the bus. I had to mail my Netflix movie back, but figured I’d avoid driving one block from where my car was parked (in the opposite direction from where I got an amazing parking spot only a block from my apartment) and just find a mailbox over on the east side once I got to work. Well, I ended up driving around Redmond and Bellevue for at least 15 minutes without seeing one damn mailbox! It still confounds and amazes me.

Anyhow, I got to work at noon right in time for lunch. I actually got a lot of work done today, but I was also there for about 12 hours total. I didn’t even leave to go home until just after midnight, because I got caught up in fixing bugs.

Tomorrow, I should go for a jog in the morning and try to get to work at a decent hour. Some sort of gay employees group at Starbucks is having some event in the early evening not too far from my apartment and other employee groups from Microsoft and Boeing have also been invited. After that, I’m planning on checking out this play play that Keenan was telling me about. Still, if I want to do anything tomorrow night, I need to get to work earlier than usual so that I can get some work done and still leave before it gets too late. The start late, finish late schedule works well with my natural sleep patterns, but it doesn’t work as well with doing much after work.

I also finally decided to go to Belize on another SHI trip in May. I filled out the registration form and wrote a check, both of which should get mailed tomorrow. I think by the time May rolls around, I’ll be ready for a nice week of vacation away from the modern world. While I was chatting about Belize a little bit at work today, Tony talked about some of his experiences traveling there, including how he got 4 botflies larva in his skin. Apparently, the rumors are true that you use meat to coax them out of your skin! Pretty nasty, especially since we were actually eating dinner when it first brought up. But seriously, it should be an interesting trip.

Long Day and Movies

I actually got up at a decent hour this morning and was out the door by 9am. However, I just missed the bus I was planning to take downtown, so I ended up walking instead. I stopped by the newstand in Pike Place Market and bought a copy of Spiegel for the bargain price of $8 + 8.8% sales tax. Yikes, but at least I have some reading material for the next few days. I figured I should buy a copy before commiting to a subscription. From there, I went to the post office where I mailed off my North Carolina license plate to Raleigh. Apparently, if I don’t return it, they’ll fine me or some such nonsense.

After getting to work, I walked directly over to the gym for a 40 minute swim. I then briefly returned to work (via the shuttle, where I made small talk with the (cute) driver) before meeting up with my recruiter for lunch over in Cafe 4. We talked about work, Nicaragua and all kinds of cool stuff. It was 2:30pm before I really got down to serious work this afternoon. I spent most of the day trying to make progress on the feature I’ve been working on lately, only to find out that the whole approach was a dead end. While that was disappointing, I’m trying to look on the positive side of all the crazy stuff I learned about bitmaps in the Windows GDI API. Some day that will hopefully come in useful. I ended up sticking around at work until the last bus, which left at 10:45. Hence, I still got a full day’s work in despite arriving at work at 2:30pm in the afternoon. In the grand scheme of things, that’s pretty awesome that my job offers such flexibility. Unfortunately, I was starving by the time I got home because I neglected dinner so long. I think I need to start brining some easily microwavable food like soup with me to work for such situations.

Upon getting home, I opened my mailbox to find that my 3 movies from Netflix had arrived. That’s pretty fast service considering they were only mailed yesterday, which was also a federal holiday. I ended up watching “Broken Hearts Club” because it was the shortest (it was already 11:30pm when I started it). I liked it ok, but at points it was a bit cheesy. It also made me feel slightly depressed being that I don’t really have a close circle of friends here (yet–I know I need to be patient and continue to put in the effort). That said, I like this idea of watching movies instead of TV. Hopefully, I can keep it up. I already went and added a bunch more movies to my queue for eventual viewing.

Movies, Running, Computer, German

Last night, I finally got around to subscribing to Netflix. I’ve officially decided I’d rather spend about $20 on that per month as opposed to $40+ per month on cable. There are so many good movies out there that I’ve never seen and frankly I’m just too lazy to walk to the video store to rent them. The first three movies I’m getting are Kinsey (heard good things about it), Christiane F.: Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (read the book, the VHS used to only be dubbed but now there’s apparently a DVD version) and The Broken Hearts Club (token gay flick).

This morning I went running for the first time in nearly two months. I believe the last time I went was along the beach in southern California around Christmas was when I was visiting my parents. Surprisingly, I didn’t have too much trouble getting back into it. I’m a little sore, but I wasn’t out of breath or tired. It was pretty cold out (probably around 35F), but I went anyways. It felt really good to be running again. I’m thinking if I can run twice a week and swim twice a week that would be a good amount of exercise that I can fit into my work schedule without too much trouble.

Today I also finally got my desktop computer all setup and was able to RAS in to work to check my email and build in the morning. I’ve promised myself that I’m going to limit the amount of work I do from home, but it can come in handy when I need to wait around at home for somebody or to check on a build.

Lately, I’ve also been thinking about getting a subscription to some sort of weekly German-language periodical like Spiegel or Die Zeit. Not only would it help me keep up my reading knowledge of German, but it would also provide good reading material for riding the bus. GLP News prints copies of many German publications at their facilities in New York, which means it’s a bit cheaper and much faster than getting the same publication from Germany.

Oregon

On Saturday morning, I drove down to Oregon to meet up with my parents. When I left, we didn’t know exactly where we were going to meet, except it would probably be somewhere in between Eugene and Salem and probably near I-5. Through the miracle of cell phones (yes, I know I just called cell phones a miracle), we met up for a pizza lunch in Albany, OR. In the parking lot, I took some boxes (my desktop) out of their car and put them in mine. After that, we went over to talk to some real estate agent, who showed us some property listings on the computer. We drove by two of the places, but neither was really what my parents were looking for. We went back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit before eating dinner at a bar and grill kind of place in downtown Albany. We went back to the hotel and watched the winter Olympics before everybody went to bed. This morning, we got up and had the free breakfast at the hotel before parting ways. I got back to Seattle around 2pm (and found a parking spot on the block adjacent to mine even!) and they headed towards Bend (east).

I’m writing this entry on my desktop. Amazingly it all seems to work despite being shipped from NC to CA via DHL and then brought my parents and me another 1200 miles. Oddly, this computer has never had a copy of Windows installed on it, but that needs to change so that I’ll be able to work from home periodically. I bought a copy of XP Pro from the company store on discount. I don’t think I’m allowed to say how much I paid, but it wasn’t free (deep discount though). The sad thing is that this might be only the third legal copy of Windows I’ve ever bought. My old laptop came with ME on it. Before that, I ran NT 4 on my desktop, because a CD of it came with an academic copy of Visual Studio 6 I bought back in 1999 or 2000. Other installations always came from CDs I managed to get from work or friends, although I don’t think I actually ever downloaded warez copies. As much as I dislike the user experience of Windows, I have to admit I have been getting used to it now that I work with it all day at work. I still prefer OS X, but gradually I’m getting back into the Windows mindset, which means I get less frustrated when Windows does something stupid.

Right now, I’m waiting for some files to be copied off my desktop onto my laptop so that I can format the whole thing. Eventually, I’ll probably dual boot the machine between Windows and Linux, but for now I need to do a fresh install. There’s just tons of crap going back as far as my old laptop on there right now.