89 comments of spam on the wall, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love life after college

Apparently I have 91 comments that need to be moderated, two of which are short anonymous comments and the rest are in Japanese. No, I didn't bother to read them all.

Daniel has nominated to change the name of this blog to "The State I Was In" seeing how often I update this thing.

Part of the problem is that I don't feel motivated to blog unless I'm depressed. I've actually been marvelously undepressed these past few months.

I have a job that I actually like. Working at Wall Street On Demand is actually satisfying. I get to work on different things every day, I keep learning new things, and I'm also learning more and more about the internal workings of our software, so that I can better fulfill the functions of my job. I have nice coworkers. My friend Deepa has lunch with me most days. My boss, while scary in a boss sort of way, is pretty cool. We had a Christmas potluck and gift exchange last month. There's always free food in the kitchen. And I can actually motivate myself to wake up early enough in the morning to go in to work at seven once or twice a week. I'm never on call and I work mostly 40 hour weeks with a few exceptions. I have excellent benefits. Overall it's pretty amazing.

I see a lot of my parents. Today, for instance, I saw both of them. I would like to note that this is not normal. However, that is not to say that it was unpleasant. I actually enjoy spending time with them. Shocking.

My main hobby these days involves crocheting things, mostly gifts for my mother, though I've also made a crab for Becca (the hooker gave her crabs!), a scarf for Stetson, and a star pillow for myself. I keep meaning to take pictures of my creations but I always give them away before I remember to take any photos. Someday. I'm also making another hat for Daniel since he LOST HIS ON THE BUS. Dang him. His coworker apparently was like "You LOST the hat that your GIRLFRIEND made for you?! You're in trouble now!" This amused me greatly. I figure Daniel's new hat will be done by the next winter season.

I've also been playing various computer games. I play Guild Wars with Daniel, and I've bought the expansions for my mother so we may start playing that as well. Cam bought me Plants V. Zombies for Christmas and I ended up playing it for a week straight while on vacation in Idaho over New Year's. I played Eve quite a bit last summer until our corp got too hard-core for me and most of my college friends quit for the school year. I picked it up this Christmas because they had a $10 month deal but I've just been logging on once a week or so to train skills. Once every few months I dust off Rock Band 2 for a couple of hours. I just bought Wii Fit Plus with the idea that it might help provide motivation to get back in shape. [Edit: TOP SECRET]

Daniel and I will likely be moving at the end of the summer. It's looking good that he'll be graduating in May and he's applied to four different teaching positions: Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington; Mesa State College in Grand Junction; Colorado College in Colorado Springs; and Bowdoin College in Maine. Notice how none of these are local. Daniel and I are both hoping for Washington purely based on the fact that we think Washington is awesome (Daniel's cousin lives near there!). The closest one is Colorado Springs and for several reasons, that is probably my second choice. Daniel's second choice is of course Mesa State, as it is his home, his alma mater, and the location of most of his family.

Enjoy the status update. It'll probably be a few months before the next one.

graduated.

Depressed.

I seem to have fallen into a funk. Apparently my internship can only be extended for 30 days past the date of my graduation. So, I have a lot less time than I thought I did. It's really hard to get myself to do anything. I've been ADD and every time I start working on something, I get distracted.

I'm also sort of pessimistic about my job prospects right now. It takes a lot of effort to go job hunting. The two interviews I've done so far didn't go very well, and I'm only really interested in one of the two jobs. It will take a lot more effort on my part to find open companies. And because my internship is only going through early June, I now have a much more open schedule than I thought I did. I guess this should be a good thing, but right now it doesn't really feel like it.

I think I tend to write in my blog only when I'm depressed. It's sort of a source of comfort to splat out my worries and doubts onto a web page. But, that's not to say that my life has been terrible lately. Pretty much from around my birthday through Mother's Day (almost a month) I've had it pretty good. My birthday was wonderful. I've been very busy, in a good way.

I think my first doubts started cropping up a couple of weeks before graduation. I've had a hard time at work ever since I found out that I probably won't get hired on when my internship ends. While I was in Boston, something I had been looking forward to for over a month, I kept swinging between delight and depression. On the one hand, I enjoyed hanging out with Stirling and her relatives, meeting the Game Dev team from AZ, making friends with the guys from UT, traipsing around Boston, and riding the train. On the other hand, the competition was exhausting, and I realized that I just wasn't excited enough about our project. It caused friction in our group and made me not want to be there.

It made me realize how important it is that I not do things half-heartedly. Any time when I don't truly believe in what I'm doing, I find it incredibly hard to keep motivated. This is true for imagine cup, just as it's true for work, lately. The problem now is figuring out what I can do to become passionate about something again...

status report

So, I keep wanting to write a blog post, but feel like I have nothing to say. Graduation is looming, so there's something I can talk about. Also, I'm procrastinating at work. This can count as my lunch break.

This is my last semester at CU, and when I'm done I'll have two degrees and a minor to show for it, a GPA above 3.3, a stole, a medal, and lots of thank you notes to write. I'm starting to make plans with my family about the graduation ceremony. I want to throw a party at our house for both family and friends. We'll see how it works out.

I still need to talk to my boss about how sure he is that I'll have a job at Sun after graduation. It's been really nice not looking for jobs, but I know that will have to change pretty soon. The Just In Time internship fair is around my birthday, and ACM is hosting a mini-career fair for CS that I'm helping with.

But, mostly, I just want the semester to be over. I'm enjoying my classes fairly well but Senior Project just drains all my energy. Daniel has heard my rants about this. Come to think of it, so has Amanda... I'm definitely at the "burn out" point of the semester where I no longer want to do any work, and just sit on my ass playing video games as soon as I leave campus. This is fine for my classes, as I only have three, and have been doing fine on getting my homework and labs done. But this isn't so great for Senior Project, where I've been really uninspired to figure out what I need to work on in terms of improving our project (which feels "done" but not "good").

It's also not so great for work. Speaking of which, I need to start a batch process real quick... Ok. My performance at work has been declining as of late, and I'm not sure if it's because I'm feeling overwhelmed in other parts of my life, or if it's because I'm not enjoying it as much lately. I still enjoy doing queries for Amy every month, but it's been reduced to a few commands in my terminal. Even the creation of the zip file is in the script itself. All I do is pull it back to my computer with SFTP. Most of my work right now involves sending emails to people who want queries run. And some of them are grumpy. I also get a lot of email that I have to wade through involving bugs in our current project - which I'm not currently involved in. I've only done the tiniest bit of coding for it, and that was separate from the main part of the application.

I've been feeling more ADD lately, which means I'm having a hard time keeping track of what I'm supposed to be doing; when I can remember, I'm reluctant to sit down and tackle a problem because I can't remember what I need to do to solve it. One of my coworkers asked me to look at internationalization in python; I worked on it a little, and then gave up, because I couldn't figure out how to test my work. I started making translation files to test my hello world program, and gave up because I didn't have all the utilities I needed to create the files. I'm not seeing the whole picture, and it frustrates me.

Being ADD is fine for school; I can switch tasks, I can go do something else and come back later. It's not so great for work. I need to meet deadlines, be productive, feel productive. Even though I probably get things done at a reasonable rate, my productivity comes in bursts, and the rest of the time I just feel irritable and scummy.

Also, I have misplaced my earbuds, and so can no longer listen to music at work. This depresses me. Where did they go??

ow

I went to the doctor's yesterday. Surprisingly enough, the only thing that still hurts is my arm, where I got my tetanus shot. It feels like the flesh where the bandaid was is bruised.

That's all I really wanted to say. I think part of the reason I write blog posts so infrequently is because, for the most part, I only have one thing that I want to write about, and I could just as easily contain it into a status message.

Speaking of which, I recently joined Twitter. So far it's been a success, I should say, thanks to the firefox plugin that lets me click on the bottom of my window and type in a new status or reply to someone else's. It's similar to gmail chat in some ways. Which is the only reason why I'm still using it.

It shows me when one of my friends has a new status. Paul's seem to be the weirdest of all my friends (and I'm following Turing, go figure). I've become better friends with him over the last year. Not surprising since we're sort of forced to spend time together. (Hooray for senior project.)

It used to be that when I said "Paul" I meant a different person. But I haven't actually talked to that one in a pretty long time. I haven't seen him at SciFi, I keep ditching GameDev, and our dinner club sort of dissipated.

back to work

I really don't update very often, do I. My life seems sort of boring from inside of it. I go to school, go to work, go home, watch tv, play Tabula Rasa, sleep.

I'm enjoying the New Pornographers CD that my dad copied for me. It's been in my car for a few weeks now and there's only one song that I skip on it. When I first listened to the CD, I hated it, of course. The only way for me to find music I really love is to listen to it over and over until I like it. For some reason I rarely like my favorite songs on first listen; everything I like straight away eventually ends up forgotten. Take, for instance, Modern Life is Rubbish, my first Blur album. I bought it because it was cheap, and on first listen hated it and wished I hadn't bought it. But after a few months and repeated listens it became one of my favorite albums. Not to say that I wouldn't recommend it over Parklife.

I've also been listening to Slacker radio at work a lot. If you'd like to listen to my station: here it is.

My semi-vegetarian status seems to still be holding, for the most part. I do think it's a good thing for me to force myself to eat shrimp or fish instead of other meats, and I like shopping at Vitamin Cottage (though Daniel complains that it's full of hippies). It has led to situations where I've eaten bread pudding for dinner, however. Next time I'll go to Noodles, I swear.

In not as happy news, today was layoff day at Sun. It seems that my entire team is untouched, but one of my friends in a different team was laid off, and I don't know what to say... I just feel awful about it, but I feel like I need to wait until she says something to talk to her. I'm also sort of edgy walking around the office, because not everyone knows if they've been laid off yet, and I don't know who's staying or not. I promised Molly I would tell her if any of her friends got RIF'd, but I honestly don't know how I would know...

And, well, it looks like I might have a job after graduation. If our team gets new responsibilities after the re-org, they'll need more people, and my manager pretty much stated that he's going to request a position opening for when I graduate. Knock on wood. So, I'm actually pretty psyched about that.

Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was interesting. Daniel and my mother and I all went down to Grand Junction and spent a week with Daniel's family. Thanksgiving dinner was quite impressive. His aunt "rented a hall" which basically ended up being a large structure with two rooms, one smaller one in the front with a fire and tables for all the food, and the one in back being quite large, with long tables for eating and a giant projector screen (think Frank's 2000" TV) hooked up to a Wii. There were various small children there who I'd never met who played DDR and Mario Kart and Wii Sports. Since there were so many people there, there was also an impressive array of dishes, ranging from turkey (two of them) and ham, to Granny T's Sweet Potatoes, to a crockpot full of mashed potatoes and a pitcher of gravy, to crackers and buffalo chicken dip, to red cabbage. And a separate dessert table.

Even more impressive was the fact that I didn't gain weight the day after.

The ride back was ok... the first part was fine, we stopped at Chili's and had lunch, and by the time we hit Vail the snow was starting to get thick. Just before we hit Eisenhower tunnel, my mother lost traction and tried pulling onto the snow to get it back, and we ended up getting stuck. A nice woman came over with a truck offering to pull us out, but there's apparently nothing on my car to hook onto. So Daniel and I ended up pushing the car and dashing back in once it was rolling again. The drive from that point on was pretty miserable, and we didn't get back to my mother's house until 8pm.

Other highlights of the trip: girl's day out, where Daniel, Ian, Clayton, and other assorted BOYS went to The Shop and played Warhammer, and the girls hung out, went shopping, ate out for lunch AND dinner, and then went to Twilight. It was entertaining enough but I don't know that I'd, say, recommend it.

Also enjoyable was the party on Friday, which benefited from a Magic draft, crockpots of chili and cheesy potatoes, and a sort-of-working pinball machine, and would have been even better if I hadn't gained a pound and a half from munching on chips and dip and brownies and cherry pizza all evening.

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I've been thinking about my blog a lot lately. Some of it has been spurred by Daniel, who just created a new blog for himself on his personal website.

I know that some people still check this every day (lord knows why) so I've been spending some time lately composing blog entries in my head. These then turn into meta-entries on the fact that I spend more time (much more time) composing entries in my head than actually writing them. Which turns into the realization that I probably won't even write the meta-entries, at which point I give up and start thinking about pie. Or homework.

Daniel is silly. He's reading over my shoulder. I mean, if he were to just wait, he could read it tomorrow during his daily grind...

Well, I should write something more than a meta-entry, but who am I kidding. I'm just procrastinating on my ethics essay.

I suppose I shall put an update here, so that when I look back I know what was going on in my life at the time.

I'm hoping to graduate this May. Saturday is my mother's birthday, and Daniel and I will have been dating for four years. I'm an intern for Sun. I like it there. I'm only taking 13 credit hours this semester, and it's quite a bit more relaxing than this spring. Next semester I'll only be taking 12. I wish I hadn't taken Databases. But at least Kenneth is in class with me. Then again, he convinces me to ditch a lot.

I like my ethics teacher, which is sort of surprising since I hated him at the start of the semester. Amer is an even better teacher than I thought he would be. I'm president of WICS. I'm a lousy fellow, but at least I try.

That's about it. I have too many things I need to do. Like go to the bank and deposit checks. And get an oil change. I can't remember everything. Maybe when I've graduated I'll finally get everything done... ha.

do you hear it too?

I swear I'm going crazy. This is the fifth time in the past two weeks that I've heard a snatch of a Paul Simon song floating through the office. By the time I leap up from my chair to investigate the source, it's gone. Today was "You Can Call Me Al"... Previous occurrences have included "Me and Julio" and "Late In the Evening".

...

I have solved the mystery! Ok, so I wasn't going crazy, but I apparently am too attuned to Paul Simon or something, because someone in an office across the hall and around the corner was playing it very quietly in his office. So, I could hear it, but only just enough to think I could have been imagining it. And my coworkers couldn't hear it...

Man, the guy must have had it on loop for the past two weeks. He must really like Paul Simon.

The return.

I realized that I started a post earlier this summer, the day after I posted a link to my work blog. I never posted it, but I think I should now.

"By the way, things I should probably mention:

"My parents are getting a divorce; they separated this Christmas. Earlier this week, my Dad proposed to his girlfriend, Shannon.

"I'm going to Japan this fall; I finally got notified of my acceptance by Kansai Gaidai (the university in Japan), and I bought plane tickets yesterday."

So, it's been a while. The only people who probably still read this know the most important things. That my parents separated about a year ago, got divorced last summer, and that my dad remarried this August, a week after I left for Japan. My dad sent me a care package on Halloween with a photobook and DVD of the wedding. It was probably better that way.

I've basically been in a different life for 4 months. I'm gradually getting back to it, but now I know how I want it to be different.

I don't want to lose Japanese. For a long time I'd sort of given up on it. I received a C- in my last Japanese language class, in Fall '06, and I decided it was time to take a break. I was burned out. I may never be fluent in the language, but I don't want to lose it again. My proficiency in Japanese plummeted while I was taking a break from it. Not speaking or thinking about a language for a year and a half does that to you.

While I was in Japan, I didn't get the immersion I had expected. Honestly, I spent most of my time there speaking and thinking in English. My classes were in English, my classmates (even those from non-English speaking countries) all spoke to me in English, my roommate and dorm-mates spoke to me in English, and those Japanese people I knew also spoke English enough that I would often have half-Japanese half-English conversations with them. I ate lunch with my speaking partners once a week, but they would often bring their Japanese friends, and instead of talking to me, ended up talking amongst themselves in Osakan slang that I couldn't understand, occasionally turning to me and attempting to translate in broken English.

By the end of my time in Japan I could talk about various things, but I still couldn't really understand what was said to me, most of the time. I did have a rather strange one-sided conversation with the taxi driver on my way to the airport the day I left, though. The thing I remember from our conversation was that he disliked old politicians - the new prime minister is younger than the last one, apparently - and that he didn't like Hillary Clinton because she was too old. Yeah... Well, at least the Japanese know the U.S. presidential candidates. More than I could say about Japanese politics. I mostly muttered "yes" "is that so?" "ah" and such while he happily ranted at me. What surprised me, though, is that I actually figured out what he was saying. Often I don't get that opportunity because when someone says something to me and expects me to understand it immediately, I often don't understand the context well enough to guess at the meaning, so they get frustrated and give up, or try switching to English.

I think the biggest change that I saw while I was in Japan was a healthier way to live. I don't really like Japanese food, so I had completely different eating habits while I was over there. I like bananas again. While I was there I lost about 30 pounds and I got into what was, for me, probably the best shape I've ever been in. I walked everywhere, biked to school every day, went outside every day, explored shrines, and hiked up a mountain. My life was relatively low stress. I just learned not to freak out or stress about things, because I had to deal with a lot of changes, and to act the way I do at home would have been horribly stressful. Japan was an interesting place, but mostly, it was an opportunity to see how my life could be different, and what I could do with it.

summer website

For those of you that still read this, or that are interested in what I'm doing this summer, I am required to make a website by the organization sponsoring my summer research. In other words, since I'm required to have a website for work, I'm much more likely to actually update it. So, here it is:

DMP Webpage

Enjoy.

No more rulers, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks (post #700)

NO MORE SCHOOL!

<dances around the room>
<dances around the room playing guitar hero>

All I have left is... my 10 page essay, due Monday. Oops. Guess I should start that, huh?

Schedule:

Tonight:
Go out to dinner with Daniel.
Go see Leah's LED clothing light show dancing thing.

Tomorrow:
Drive Dan to school for his final at 9.
Study for astronomy final.
Astronomy final at 10:30.
Lunch, perhaps?
Work on paper, perhaps?
Sci-Fi.
Spiderman 3.

Sunday:
Study / work on paper.
BBQ with the fellows at 5.

Monday:
Physics final at 10:30.
Turn in paper by 4.

Tuesday:
GameDev. KHAAAAAN!

Wednesday:
Review session for 1300 (hey, maybe I should set one up for 2270? Nah. Too lazy.)

Thursday:
Theory of Comp final at 10:30. (Notice how all my finals are at 10:30?)
SWEET SWEET FREEDOM!

Friday:
Party.

Beyond:
Look for an apartment. Crap.

t-shirts and birthdays.

I was surfing on Engrish.com and I found this t-shirt:

Spilled Milk

Indeed.

I'll be turning 21 next month. In 6 weeks, actually...

I don't know what to do. I'm not really very excited about it, actually. I don't like alcohol, and I don't want to get drunk. I guess I'd like to try some drinks (though dad did say he'd buy me some alcohol if I came by to see the show). I want a piña colada. And I want to try hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. But I don't really want to do anything else. Maybe we could see a movie or something. I want to hang out with Nikki, and Daniel, and Cam. And Ian wanted to come too. Which means I should probably invite my other friends... but it's a Monday, and I don't know that I'll want to... I'm not sure I'll want to do much of anything. Stupid Mondays.

I'm tired. And I haven't done anything productive all night. I just feel blah. I don't really want to work on physics. And I can't concentrate long enough to determine if there's anything else due, that I might actually want to do...