monkey nonsense

so i am, by the far, in my humble opinion, the coolest non-nerdy person i know. ok, so some of that is an exaggeration… i’ll settle for non-nerdy

but i’m going to have to go a little nerdy for a second… and yet so not very nerdy since it’s an example of my ineptness at programming. i remember in college, we were programming some big project that i honestly had no clue (and still don’t have a clue) how it was supposed to work… so not surprisingly, it exploded like all my programs do… i think because i had a memory leak of some sort. i was probably declaring things and never cleaning up after myself… (that’s why i like java… trash collector right??). and i think i might’ve been spawning off threads and not really paying attention to what i needed them for, if they ever came back, or whatever. well… here’s an example of even worse…

it’s not really multi threading or allocating memory. it’s just opening up excel spreadsheets and not really closing them…. please remember to close stuff… it was kind of annoying having to kill all these processes…

I was reading a CNN article about black friday deals, saw one for Thomas the Tank Engine.

I remember watching the show before and liking Percy… but i forgot most of the other trains. so I read the wikipedia article on them. There’s apparently a Emily train! only female train… so what’s up with that? how come so many children’s cartoons only have a token female? (i.e. Smurfette) how does that work with the storyline? all the male trains (or smurfs) will be trying to woo the female (remember handy smurf and his crush on smurfette??)… it’s just encouraging little kids to start enjoying love dramas- unrequited love… love triangles… terrible!

turkey day is my favorite holiday. it’s a holiday entirely devoted to overeating! if there’s anything i’m good at in this world, it’s overeating! so having a holiday where you can do just that? it’s awesome!

i think im going to start marking my calendar by turkey day. so happy new year! only 364 more days until the next turkey day!! oo, i should start a countdown!!

i guess the other part of turkey day is that whole thanks part. i dunno. to me, turkey day has always been about food. yes, the pilgrims were thankful to squanto… but they were thankful because he brought food!! say squanto just came over to say hi to the new neighbors… would the pilgrims really be that thankful? no. (btw, read the wikipedia article on squanto… it is NOTHING like what they taught us in school. in school, squanto comes walking up to the pilgrims holding cornucopias of food…)

but anyways… for this year, i’m turkeyful for

• continued health for family, friends, and self… it’s scary to think time progresses… when you’re a kid, i feel like time barely moves! now… i feel older each day i’m glad my maternal grandparents are still alive and playing old school japanese video games, my parents are healthy and having fun, and for so many healthy baby additions to the family (yay cedy, hugo, and other cousin’s baby who i don’t know its name… don’t even know it’s gender!!)
• finding a house! after “looking” for so many years… and then really looking for half a year… find a house that feels like home! no more moving!!!
• changes! i usually hate change but i think the challenge of a new job is good for me! and driving a rice rocket isn’t all that bad… no, i take that back. i still miss the camry…
• fun! i like having fun! i feel fortunate that i’m able to have fun…. playing games, playing outside, eating food, or just goofing off. anyone want to play with me???

my old office made the dcist!

http://dcist.com/2009/11/increased_urban_walkability_for_the.php

of course the pic is from 1992 before my old company even existed… and before they were located in that area. i like to look at old pictures of areas… see how much the area has changed and what hasn’t changed…

i should’ve been a transportation/traffic engineer…

my new favorite blog to read right now is: http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com!

oh man, finally a place where people share my similar hatred towards metro. seriously, i thought the metro system was ok in high school because i rarely rode it. but once i started working in dc, the commute on metro was just terrible! i can actually get to work faster driving some times than metro-ing! and the cost is outrageous. there should be NO reason why driving into DC and parking should be cheaper than metro-ing in… but it was for me!! (granted i parked in a ghetto parking lot, but whatevs)

my favorite post so far:
http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/2009/08/if-i-ran-metro-i-would.html… i think one of my “when i rule the world” posts was actually about metro!

so it’s been a few weeks at the new job… and i’ve noticed some things that both my current company and previous company have in common. things that i’m surprised about.

• “non-casual tuesdays”/”tie tuesdays”… so both of these companies have pretty casual dress codes. flipflops (havent tried this yet at the new job… but that’s because it’s fall/winter), jeans, etc. and for whatever reasons, both companies feel compelled to have a non-casual day to allow people to dress up. and for whatever reason, they’ve targeted tuesdays as the day for non-casual-ness! when i got the meeting invite for “tie tuesday” at my new job, i cracked up because it was as if they wanted to match up with my old company’s “non-casual tuesdays!”
• meeting free times… old company had a meeting free zone on thursdays. interestingly enough, new company tries not to put meetings on tuesdays and thursdays! i think this is a pretty good idea though… i hate having my whole day consumed by meetings.

some things are very different…

• my desk has no wheels… my old company had everyone’s desk on wheels… and we would re-configure and roll around our desks pretty often! my new desk does not seem mobile.
• i have a phone number… but no phone! there is no phone at my desk. if you tried to call my number (and i don’t even know it), i’m not sure where it’d go… we all have numbers. i was given a phone list on my first day… but very few people have phones!
• so both my first job and second companies were in the process of merging (one as the acquire-e and other as the acquire-r) with a canadian company. this time, there does not appear to be any canadians in sight!! maybe i shouldn’t say that too soon…

i started my new job this week! it’s been pretty interesting so far. it’s been awhile since i’ve had to learn a new application.

i’m doing pretty much the same thing i did at my old company for my new company. and actually… i’ve discovered i really do like automation! i find it very interesting and even though i’m totally not nerdy (because i’m just way too cool for that ), it makes me excited to think of a reusable framework for automation!

yay for finding something interesting to do for a job! i wonder if this is what i’m going to do for a career? or whether the interest will wear away eventually… hey, it’s lasted 3+ years already!

it’s been awhile since i’ve posted any guitar butchering… but i have been trying to practice! it’s especially productive since danny usually has dan teach him some stuff after small group which makes me get out the guitar more often too! thanks danny and dan!

this song is NOT one of the songs i learned with them. try to guess what it is! i actually don’t know how to play the F chord (and u’ll be able to tell whenever that chord comes up!) and i start to laugh when i hit a particularly bad stretch.

tune 7

an observation made by some friends during small group – i’m apparently the benjamin button of car owners.

(zeroth car – i learned on a pontaic grandam station wagon. but then it broke down too often (if you turned too fast), leaked when it rained, and had no side view mirror on the passenger side, so then i ended up driving the newer car more often. it wasn’t really my car.)
first car – buick regal. i loved my regal! when i think about how awesome it was to drive that boat and all the features it had in it? steering wheel audio controls! in a 1996(? maybe 95) model! that didn’t come to the camry until 2005!
second car – toyota camry. i downgraded to a smaller car with the camry. but it was still a family sized car. i loved how smooth the camry’s ride was, how many people could sit in it, and how large the trunk was!
third car – scion tc. it’s a sporty car.

so i’ve gone from (station wagon->) buick regal -> toyota camry -> scion tc. the cars keep skewing younger! at this rate, i’ll be on a bicycle by the time i’m old!

so i bought a new used car – scion tc. it’s very different from my camry… but it was in kind of in my price range (close enough) with the features i wanted (really only ABS) and low mileage. i wanted a 2004ish camry with ABS with 30-40k miles, but 1. the first dealership sold the car before i even got my insurance check 2. the second dealership was idiotic and had their salesman offer it to me at the price i wanted only to pull back the offer 3. the last dealership offered it to me at the price i wanted, but then we found out the car had no ABS… in any case… i couldn’t get a camry i was bummed.

things i miss about my camry:

• 4 doors. 4 doors are so convenient! even if it’s just me that’s riding in the car… it’s nice to be able to easily put things in the backseat. and lately, i’ve been carpooling. this means that one of my passengers needs to crawl out of the back… very annoying.
• larrrge trunk. do you know how many dead bodies can fit in a camry’s trunk??? MANY!
• quiet ride. seriously, i feel like the comfort level of riding a camry is comparable to luxury cars. it’s really quiet, it’s really smooth. i miss it. and my scion makes noises. not normal noises. i swear there’s something wrong with it. i got a lemon.
• gas tank. i filled up my scion for the first time this past week. it took 12 gallons. i miss my 15+ gallon tank on the camry.
• it’s not a rice rocket. so apparently, the scion i bought is a rice rocket. i didn’t put it all together at the time… but when i bought it, i knew about the air intake. i thought it was kind of annoying but the car was cheap! i also noticed the tinted windows, but didn’t think anything of it. until i saw it in the daylight more. it is REALLY darkly tinted!!! like unless you go right up to the glass, u can’t see thru the window! then… i went to austin and saw all these tcs… and they looked different than mine. when i got back, i noticed i have a suped up exhaust!

things i like about the scion:

• it handles better than the camry. this could be because it’s a smaller car… but maybe also because it’s designed to handle better? (supposedly sportier?)
• blue! my odometer lights up blue! i test drove during the day so i didn’t know this feature. it was a pleasant surprise. i love blue!! also, the light in the rearseat area also lights up blue!! and the radio allows you to pick the color of its display. pretty useless feature if you ask me… i usually don’t care what color my display is. but of course, i set mine to be blue
• smaller. it’s nice being a little bit smaller. the scion is actually wider than the corolla so it’s a nice width. but it’s shorter. makes for parking in my garage a lot easier! i don’t have to go alllll the way forward just to make sure i clear the garage door.

i think in general, i still prefer the camry. but given the price range i had to work with, the scion’s a pretty nice car!!