The Obligatory Christmas Post

I wasn't going to make this post because everybody so far has probably wished you a Merry Christmas at least 30 times.  A lot of them probably came in the form of an online post of some sort and even more probably came in text messages from people you haven't spoken to in 6 months or more.  I don't know you but that doesn't make Christmas any less meaningful.  It doesn't matter what you celebrate, may it be happy.

And yes, I do feel better.  I'm not 100% yet but the past 2 days have been a bit of a rollercoaster.  Yesterday I was doing far better than today though I'd say I'm 65% there today.  Damn headache keeps coming back randomly but not enough to stop me, just enough to annoy me and make me cranky :-P

Of all the luck...

Disorientation, check

Inability to concentrate, check

Hypersensitivity, check

Body aches, check

Good God, it's a cold.  And 3 days before Christmas.

I can't believe my luck

Today started off particularly shitty.  It all stemmed from yesterday at work.  If other departments could get their shit together before they talk to a developer, that'd be great...but apparently too much to ask for.

I put up a whole bunch of shit, I check it, I have QA check it, I have the creator of the task check it, then I go home.  I receive a nasty email at 6:45 forwarded from my boss that she received from the marketing manager.  Apparently it was an absolute fucking emergency that some banners go live on the website at 6PM and not midnight like I coded them.  I told the person that put the task in that they'd go live at midnight with all the other banners they had given me.  I wasn't going to bend over backwards for them since the task was already late and being done on only hours notice.

The marketing manager raises a HUGE stink about the fact that it's not live.  Luckily we have a system that keeps track of all our tasks and all comments posted to it where it clearly says "this will go live at midnight" and the task creator says "ok".  I sent the marketing manager an email detailing all the events leading upto the task going live and pointed out that if there was a problem it was with the communication between her and her team.  She then went to my boss and my boss more than backed me up, especially considering that they fucked up yet again this morning.  She didn't have a leg to stand on.

So after all that drama and aggrivation at work, I come home in the sleet/snow and break out the snow blower and clear my driveway, clear the sidewalk and the walkway around the house.  I'm almost done and I run over an extension cord...awesome.  Now I have to untangle this shit.  I tip the snow blower over and start to untangle the fucking cord.  After getting it free of the machine I continue.  I'm outside for about an hour and in that time what I first cleared is now covered with snow again so I give it a second go for good measure before putting the snow blower away.  I go to put the snow blower away but we have 2 cars parked side by side in the driveway so I need to move one before I can get the machine back in the garage...my car key is missing.  It's not in my pocket and it's not in the ignition.  FUCK!  I remember hearing a clicking sound inside the snow blower when I went over the area I was untangling the extension cord at.  I must've dropped my key and the snow blower threw it somewhere in the front yard.

Now I'm out a $300 car key.

I Don't Get It

There's really no way to put this better than "I should be pulled over a LOT more often".

I'm cruising along at 80MPH on the parkway and it's not terribly fast.  I'm passing cars but not incredibly quickly.  At one point I pass a little old civic with a bigger tail pipe than stock.  I can tell by the look of it that it's somebody I can have fun with.  He doesn't bite and I don't do anything more than pass him like all the other cars.

A few minutes later I see these headlights coming up "fast".  I'm doing 80 still and this car is going faster than me.  Etiquette says to let him pass but he's not going fast enough to let him pass because there's a car in front of me that I want to get around.  I go around it and the civic still hasn't passed me.  Now I'm just wondering that the hell is going on but I continue on my way as I had been.  He decided to FINALLY pass me after a few minutes but I watched him do it so slowly that I was able to watch, wait, change my mind after a few seconds and go.  He didn't really stand much of a chance.  I slowed down after 30 seconds or so and declared victory with my hazards.  He was still catching up, slowed down a bit, then guns it again.  As I'm doing 80 and he's passing me I see aftermarket gauges lighting up his car.  This was just plain hilarious because my car is completely stock.

He took so long to get away from me that I, again, changed my mind.  I decided to play with him again.  He was in the left lane flooring it.  I came up behind him and the poor little car just couldn't get enough speed.  He was forced to let me pass.  I hate Hondas just for the sole fact that they've become synonymous with teenage drivers.  Every punk driving one wants to race.  I'll give him one.  My car doesn't even break 200HP or 200ft-lb at the flywheel (let alone the wheels) which just makes it all the funnier.  Hmm, maybe I should rethink the supercharger I wanted to get.  This can only lead to trouble.

Friends and Acquaintances

I've said it before and it bears repeating because I feel so naive.  I always considered myself a good judge of character and I consciously repress those feelings because I don't want to be prejudiced.  I want to be fair to everyone so I give people a chance.  Stupid me.

I went to a co-worker's house, he made this cranberry-grape and Skyy drink.  You couldn't taste the alcohol at all...wow was that a bad idea (because it was DELICIOUS!).  So here we are playing poker, there are about 6 of us.  We all go out for a cigarette (I don't smoke but I wanted to be social so I went out there to accompany them) and at some point the host's brother whips out two half-smoked joints.  I haven't smoked in about 3 years so I figured there was no harm in it.  My boss did as well and a friend of ours just stared at us and told us how disappointed he was.  He proceeded to really lay into my boss for it because she has kids and what not.

Before I continue this story, let me say that I don't condone drug abuse.  I normally don't smoke but I have no problem with recreational use every once in a while.  It'll probably be another 3 years if I ever smoke again and it's not for lack of availability, I've turned it down plenty of times in the past 3 years.  That being said, I'm not going to give anybody shit for doing the same.  If you smoke every week though, then there's a bit of a problem and I'll try to convince you to stop, but I most certainly won't go on and insult you and so forth.  Let's continue where we left off...

I went inside, it was cold out.  We basically took 2 puffs each and it was gone.  Apparently they stayed outside smoking their cigarettes and he really let her have it.  He then goes on to say some really fucked up stuff about her marriage and how her husband thinks she's having an affair with him but he should really be worrying about me...all within earshot of our host, which I said earlier, we work with.  Wonderful.  Apparently he also continued to say shit at the table while we were playing poker.  I honestly don't remember half of this because I was just beginning to sober up from the vodka but I'm told things were said and friendships are on the rocks now.  He said something to the effect of "You need to slap your wife around" and my boss' husband responded with a firm "keep your mouth shut".  Needless to say, he won't be invited to further get-togethers.

This is some good shit.  When I met him he looked like a complete asshole.  I didn't talk to him at work for months before I had to work with him on the same team.  At that point, we became friends and he was recently laid off.  He was always a bit of a dick to people but it was mostly funny and somewhat harmless.  Now I'm realizing my initial observation was correct and I completely ignored it.

I'm not the kind of person that's emotionally open.  For me to open up to somebody takes time, lots of it.  Even then, even though I may have opened up to them I'm still very guarded and nobody really knows anything about my life and the goings-on in my head/heart.  I keep few friends for this reason and to lose one this way means I have even fewer now.  Amazing.  I used to consider my lack of friends a virtue because I go for quality, not quantity but now I'm starting to feel alone but still unwilling to waiver in the quality of friends I look for.  Do I consider more people friends and simply take what they say and do with a grain of salt and chalk it up to their personality or do I have fewer friends?  I guess this is where somebody says "Welcome to the real world".  I'm not ready.

The Job Search Continues

I posted my resumé online last night.  I got 4-5 phonecalls today.  It was amusing.  I'm entertaining some of the offers, I need to find a new job because I don't know how long the company is going to last.  It's scary when you don't know if you'll have a job and not because you suck at your job, because I'm sure you can feel that one coming, but simply due to lack of funds.  I doubt that at this point they'll single anybody out because there's hardly anybody left so the only logical step from here is to close the company (unless they can get back on their feet and I don't know anything about how long that would take or how close we are).

I think it's time for a new job anyway.  I don't know if any of you have felt this but I've had it happen at my retail jobs; I felt complacent and I knew I could get away with more than I should.  When you know the system, you know the people, you can use situations to your advantage.  I'm not saying use people, but things may no longer be a challenge or you can find a way to shirk something onto somebody else.  I don't like doing that and so to keep myself honest I think it's time to move on.  Don't get me wrong, I pull my own weight and then some, I just think in order for me to grow in experience I need to go someplace that can challenge me with something more than "how fast can you put up 70 promos?"

And so the job search continues...

Emotions and Dreams

Last night I had the most amazing dream.  Let me begin with a few facts.  I'm not a father, nor have I ever come close to being one.  I don't consider myself to be a father-figure to anyone nor am I ready to become one.  I do love, however, helping and protecting so I guess that's somewhat fatherly.  Also, I'm not religious.  I consider myself to be agnostic.  I don't particularly believe God has anything to do with our daily lives, He probably has better things to do.  I do believe in God, I don't believe in religion.  Let's move on.

The circumstances are shady.  For some reason I have two children and the mother isn't in this dream, it seems.  I'm in a synagogue/church.  I'm apparently here to affiliate my children with a religion.  My oldest, a boy no older than 8 will be Jewish and my little girl will be Catholic.

My son appears to be quite happy about the whole thing and my daughter seems to be almost too young to care.  He's asking questions and as we get closer to the "room" in which he's to officially accept his religion he no longer wants to go through with it.  He begins to cry and tell me he doesn't want to do it.  Immediately I begin to console him.  The exact words I don't remember but it's basically "You don't have to, this is YOUR day and if you don't want to that's okay".  He's sobbing and you can see it's just so heartfelt and he genuinely doesn't want this at all.  I get down on the floor sitting Indian-style and he kneels down and I just hold him as he cries.  I try my best to console him and make him understand that it's entirely okay.

As he's calming down the Rabbi approaches me and, again the exact words aren't clear to me but here's the general idea, he says something along the lines of "We're here for a reason and he's just wasing my time".  I don't take kindly to this.  My son and I are now standing, I'm still hugging him, holding his head with one arm as he sobs and my other arm outstretched pointing at the Rabbi with a me yelling something the lines of "Nobody yells at my son that way and you're here because it's your job".  We go back and forth and I end with "I don't need to take this from you.  I don't want to listen to anymore of your nonsense", and I appeal to another Rabbi to get him away from my family.

My daughter doesn't appear to play much of a role in this.  I'm not sure what happens between the Rabbi thing and now but I simply bring her to another "room" and that's where she becomes Catholic.

I wake up feeling such anger at the Rabbi, such love and a need to protect my son.  And within minutes it's all gone.  A wonderful dream but sadly it was only a dream.  I can only hope that in the future I have a little boy of my own, one to love and protect; to show him the world - someone that I mean the world to.  I'm not ready now, but one day I will be.

I find it amazing that dreams can bring out such emotion; emotions we've never felt before and yet they feel so real.  Just writing this post made me feel some of that again, though I'm sure even that will begin to fade.  It's too bad, it was such a great feeling.  Also, keep in mind that the dream does not, in any way, express how I feel about one religion over the other.  Take it as just a backdrop, what's important is the what, not the why.  The emotion and the characters are the focus.

The Recent Goings-on

So much shit has been going on; mostly with work.  As you know, they laid off all those people and now there are a total of 3 of us working like crazy on all these brands to get everything live.  It's the most tedious and repetitive work.  I prefer a challenge not monotony.

Enough about work, I've been feeling very depressed lately.  Not in the way you're probably thinking, though.  I've been feeling very "blah", not "The world is against me!  I want to die!".  Maybe it's seasonal, though this never happened before.  In some regards I should be happy I'm healthy, I have my handful of friends, and my family.  But lately I've been feeling like I don't want to go anywhere, do anything...I don't know.

I want to see if I go snowboarding with a few people from work next weekend.  I've never snowboarded before, I've only been skiing.  I've been wakeboarding, that was difficult but I got the hang of it after a while, though I wasn't very good.  It should get my mind off things.  Life just isn't what I remember.  The simplicity of being a kid is gone.  Responsibility takes over and I feel thrust into it.  I'm still impatient, cocky, and to some degree, immature.

I just feel terribly short-sighted.  Like I don't know where I'm headed.  I guess we all feel that way though.  There's a degree of uncertainty to all our lives.  I just never had it staring me in the face, never had to think about it before.  I've also been craving someone to hold and someone to hold me.  I've felt this before and it only lead to trouble.  But here it is again.  I mean, I have somebody that likes me...a lot.  but I'm just not interested in her.  I'm fairly picky with my choice of girls, and even pickier when it comes to guys...that doesn't make it easy to find someone - throw in some shyness and you have yourself a whole slew of reasons why I'm single.

Oh well.  We'll see where I go from here

Oh for the Love of God, Make it Stop!

So much work and only 3 people.  I tried writing about it just now and erased the whole post because it was barely coherent.  It made me sound, not only crazy, but like a fucking whiner.  I'm gonna go do something other than bitch.

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss me mind the most!" - Jadrian

Nothing could better sum up how I feel.

World record

I went over my boss' house Friday after work. We invited one of our friends who was laid off. We had some drinks, watched Iron Man, played risk and drank some more. I wanted to go home at the end of the night because I don't like being offered to stay the night due to my stupidity. I drank too much and didn't want to be a burden. Granted, staying was the smart choice since driving in that condition would've
been terrible.

Her kids love me to some odd reason. I've noticed most kids do. I don't think I've paid them much attention until last night, which makes it all the more amusing. Her 4 year old was drawing me pictures and her seven year old was being a typical boy and jumping around. He eventually got tired and laid down on the couch next to me. The he kept scooching over until he was laying against me. My boss gave me this look like "Wtf? Is he bothering you?" and it was far more amusing than bothersome. It was actually cute.

I spent the night and left around 10. I couldn't have been anymore pale. I felt like shit. I made it home at some point, I have no idea what time. And I've been sleeping since. I think it's been about 19 hours at this point. I'm a mess :-P

A sneaking suspicion

I posted a comment on josh's blog and got an email from google a few minutes later saying my email couldn't be sent. I checked it and it
was a comment notice to josh with my comment. The odd part is it was addressed to webmaster@freshboy.co.uk. Now, I'm no rocket scientist but to my knowledge he's supposed to be a teenage boy in Oxford, not the webmaster of a gay porn site.

Oh, and the Internet is fucked up here at work so we're twiddling our
thumbs.

Aint that some shit

If I already used that as a title for another post, sorry.  This totally deserves it though.  Today they made ANOTHER round of cuts.  My boss (she's still around for the time being, God knows when they'll get rid of her too though) called me into her office and told me there was going to be some stuff going down but that I shouldn't worry.  A few hours later the lead Flash developer gets called into the CTO's office.  He comes out, puts his hat on and his coat and leaves.  This is at 4:45, our day ends at 6...I knew what had just happened.  Then I saw more people leaving.  It was scary.

The Front End team is down to 3 people, the Interactive team has been dissolved, and the back-end is down to 4.  Aint that some shit.

I've been talking to a recruiter lately about a job in Toronto, Ontario (yup, up in Canada).  I really want to take it since they're willing to relocate whoever they pick for the job.  We'll see how that goes.  The NY Times never got back to me so whatever.  Maybe a move away from the American economy is exactly what I need.  I hope it works out.  I hate the cold but I'll deal if I get to move out on my own and explore another country.

Fruits of My Labor

So my project FINALLY went live!  It's about time, too.  I was at work til about 6:45 making sure it launched without a problem.  We have a few things to add to it still so it's not perfect but it's pretty good so far.  One of the back-end guys messed up a query which caused it to send some empty data to my app and because my app shouldn't receive empty data it failed at one point.  So I'll be putting in some extra checks to make sure it doesn't do that if it receives unexpected data (or lack thereof).  Without further ado, I give you my project: http://www.playboystore.com/landingpages/customizer.php?dept=women

Fucked up

I love knowing stuff that other people don't. In this case, though, it's more of a curse. I'm out having drinks for my boss' last day. The problem is nobody knows it's her last day.  She was laid off and nobody knows yet. Fucking awesome.

They're making more cuts. Of course the first to go is the one that makes the place run somewhat smoothly. My faith in the company is shaken. On the bright side my project finally goes live Monday. This week was fine until today.

I'll post a link to my app on Monday

Seeing somebody die

I had the most fucked up dream I've EVER had last night. Only once have I felt emotion so strong in a dream and it was horrific.

Last night I went to sleep and I don't remember much about the bulk of my dreams except for the fact that I know I had more than one but only one sticks out in my mind. I'm in what appears to be a mall, in a store. In this store is my boss and with her are her husband and my old boss (we all work together). Suddenly we see the sewers (in the middle of the main hallway of this mall as if it were a street) start to explode upwards with a rush of water and a fireball engulfing the column of water. One by one they do this down the "street". It seems that in this dream my boss' husband is a firefighter and he's going to go rush off to solve this problem. We tell him a few times that he needn't worry (odd), possibly because nobody's hurt or walking there...and it's a dream so stuff doesn't make sense. Around the 3rd-4th explosion it reaches a central section, kind of like an intersection. This intersection simply explodes and collapses. Now we have a problem.

Water starts gushing out onto the "street" in all directions. It seems that this "street" is on the 3rd floor of this "mall" though. There are 2 girls at the edge of the street when the water starts gushing and it starts to cover one of the girls and push her. After a few tense moments it seems she's ok...but the other girl jumps for some reason. I quickly take off a layer of clothing, my jacket I think, and jump after her but land only one floor down. I'm sure she went further. I run around to the side she was on when she jumped and hurdle a wall that appears lead down another floor. At the top of this wall I realize it's a fountain. It's shallow. I look to my right and see the little girl crushed. She landed in this shallow fountain. Her mother comes running behind me a few moments later and scoops up her dead child. I'm in shock. Somebody yells to get her camera. She had a camera around her neck when she jumped. For some reason getting the camera seemed important. I run to get the camera and see it's completely smashed in but not shattered. This camera was symbolic of the girl and her state. My boss comes up behind me to give me a hug. I run and curl up in a corner facing the wall as I hold the camera, whimpering. I wake up whimpering. I've never felt so much loss.

Music - part one of many (and a job offer too!)

I'll most likely keep you guys informed as to music I hear that I like. I like music and it plays a big part in my day so you'll most likely see these posts every now and then. The artist I discovered last night while on youtube was Maria Mena. She has the most amazing voice and she's beautiful to boot. I'll try to embed the video below (the video says embedding was disabled by request and won't give you the code so I'm playing around with it :-D)

apparently that didn't work...so just click here to see it. It seems they really did disable embedding, it's not that they don't show you the code and hope you're too dumb to figure it out. Anyway, she has a simply amazing voice.

EDIT:
I was at work today when I checked my email and saw a linked-in message. Normally I ignore these because they're recruiters and they annoy me. This one was different, though. It was from the NY Times. They're seeing if I'm interested in a position as a Senior Developer. This sort of scares me. I've never understood the divide between Junior and Senior level anything. It seems purely subjective to me. Also I've only been at the company for a year at this point so it leads me to doubt whether I'm qualified for a Senior level position. I have no way of finding out unless I ask though so I responded and I'm hoping to hear back.

Attention Whore

The title suggests anger at someone...not so. It's about me! I realized today that I was feeling particularly camera whorish, which is completely unlike me. I hate the way I turn out in pictures most of the time. Today, however, I was taking a shower and I got out and figured "why don't I take a few 'fresh out of the shower' pictures?", and so it began. No, there are no nudes :-P. I may post them sooner or later once I decide if it was a good idea or not. Figured I'd tell you about my incredibly random train of thought though. Again, this was completely unlike me.

A Night on the Town

I went into the city last night with some friends from work. We had fun. I don't dance but I managed to not look like a complete fool so I guess that's good. I ended up being the designated driver. I had the least to drink. I have NO idea how to navigate the city. The city confuses the hell out of me. Luckily we had a GPS system built into the car (which I had to learn how to use on the fly since it wasn't my car). I was going to drive them all home but Mike seemed to be feeling a lot better by the time we got back into NJ. He said he'd take it from there so we got my car and I headed home.

Mike is a very quiet, reserved guy. The man can dance! I'm beyond horrible. I enjoyed myself even though clubs aren't my thing. He must've thought I wasn't having fun because I wasn't moving much at first but, sadly enough, that's just the way I am. He wants to go out next weekend too but I don't think I'm up for it. Maybe in a few weeks.

Non-descript Update

I haven't had much happen in the past few days. Obviously America's first black president but that has more of a historical significance to me than a personal significance. I honestly didn't like one candidate more than the other. I could've gone either way on the issue.

I'm feeling kinda crappy and have been for the past week or so. I'm going into the city this weekend with a few friends from work. Could be fun, should be. I recently discovered a kickass band thanks to thejoefrom1993. I like their whole album "Wall of people". The band is "Monty Are I". Their whole album is full of passion and every song is different in terms of its sound and sometimes even its genre. The guitar and drum work is amazing and the lyrics and vocals are just as good.

That's about all that's currently going on my life I guess. Oh, I just saw today that my youtube video has 59 views and a 5 star rating (with one rating). Pretty cool.

Dumb People - They're Everywhere

I can't escape them, I swear. They follow me wherever I go. I had a brunch-like thing with my parents downstairs and we got into an "Palin is dumb" conversation and we just kept making fun of her. If I have to choose the lesser of two evils, I'll choose Obama. Now here comes the fun part. My stepfather mentions that McCain looks like a midget and does a little impression of McCain never bringing his arms up past his elbows. I got slightly annoyed. The guy is old, he was a POW for years and I'm sure it's left physical scars and impairments of some sort so to make fun of the guy just isn't right, not physically anyway.

I say all of this to them and they fire back with "We're prisoners of the Bush regime!" and I respond saying "I don't know about you but I'm not in a prisoner camp being physically tortured". Their response is "We might as well be! This is worse!".

I walked away. I think I ate for 5 minutes total before I walked away from them. At least I'm not hungry anymore, but I'm definitely not satisfied. I might go out and get some food.

I like arguments and the back-and-forth of a good debate. I hate stupidity and arguments that aren't thought through and baseless points. Just because words are coming out of your mouth doesn't mean you're conversing. A speak and spell may not have a mouth but it can speak words (who remembers the speak and spell? :-D) and that's what I'm equating people to that simply vomit words as if to keep the flow going. I would enjoy far more if you paused and thought and broke the flow than you verbally defecating in order to "argue your point".

Brush with Death

I was driving home last night after going out to a bar to celebrate the launch of a new website. I'm driving back home on the Parkway and I'm anal about certain things. One of which is not driving in the left lane unless you're actually passing somebody. The Parkway is desolate. Maybe a car here or there, but getting towards my exit, I'm maybe 10 minutes out and I grab my phone to change the song (I have my radio playing off my phone) and I look up...I see brake lights on the shoulder and I'm thinking...ok that's weird. I'm doing about 80-90 and all of a sudden i FLY past something in the left lane. I look in my mirror and see tail lights. Apparently the car on the shoulder had collided with the CAR that I flew past in the left lane. If I had been in the left lane I never would've seen him. His front end was smashed pretty badly and his headlights were completely broken because of it meaning I wouldn't have seen him until...well until i was about to hit him at ~80MPH.

Some scary shit. I'm alive out of sheer luck. I had a 33% chance of getting into an accident there and probably inches away from 100%

Going to hell

For the longest time I've made this claim. I'm quite sure I cemented this tonight. I always considered myself a person of strong moral fiber. And so the story begins.

Drinks consumed. You need a ride home.
Feeling good, both of us
We drive away.
Your lust so obvious,
Your touch prevails.
Outside your house, your will so strong.
I fake innocence,
I pretend to fight temptation in vain.
You claim drink as my weakness.
I let you continue.
Release.
Your husband does not know.
Now we have work in the morning.
What does tomorrow hold?

FINALLY!

A sigh of relief as I write the last few lines of code for the Flash app I'm working on at work. I couldn't believe it would finally be done. These last 2 weeks have been hell. Somehow we allow the design department to dictate functionality by simply drawing shit on a canvas in Photoshop. After arguing a few points and somebody noticing that we would NEVER get done if the design department kept making changes, I was allowed to move forward with most of the original ideas and a few added ones. somewhere in the vicinity of November 15 I'll be posting a link to the finished product. Now I'll be able to work on other stuff that demands my attention...the cycle never ends.

Stuck in my head

So I had a really good song stuck in my head.  It's an original song by Reina Del Cid on YouTube.  It's called Sirens.  I couldn't help but sing it over and over and I finally decided to record myself singing the chorus.  I hope it sounds ok.  Let me know what you think.

Poker Champ

Went out last night with a few people from work.  We had a poker/UFC night at Dan's house, he's the IT manager.  He's a funny guy.  As soon as I got there he had a beer and did a shotgun...he had to be toasted by the end of the night.  His brother made the strongest Long Island Iced Teas I've ever had.  We started playing poker around 6:30-7:00.  It wasn't looking very good for me, I had 5 chips left.  Somehow I started winning...a lot.  Dan's neighbor tried to knock me out by putting me all in.  I ended up taking him out shortly after that.  I'm not sure if it was the alcohol or some skill starting to manifest itself but I started hustling them and bluffing (I've never been good at poker mainly because I didn't understand it until recently).  I baited Nick, one of the guys in my department, towards the end too.  I checked for a few rounds and saw he had something and let him bet.  Towards the end I upped his bets by nearly 2-3x to beat his hand with a straight.  Knocked him out on that one.

In the end I won 2 games of poker and lost the last one.  It was only a $10 buy in because we were playing for fun.

I was driving home and shortly after getting off the highway I encounter a red light.  There's a Mustang next to me (2000's body).  I'm not really in the mood to race so I take it easy and now we're both cruising at 40 in a 35.  Out of nowhere an older style Maxima flies past us on the wrong side of the road as if we're not going fast enough for him.  We pull up to the next red light and this asshole is in between lanes!  I stop behind him and so does the Mustang.  The light turns green and the Mustang turns left and I go around the Maxima on the right.  I'm sure he was caught off guard by both of us.  Now I'm cruising again and he tries to go around me on the left again only this time it's only one lane.  I throw it into 2nd and floor it because I'll be damned if I let him do that again.  Apparently the earlier model Maximas have quite a bit of power because he clearly won by about a car length and moved back over barely in front of me and started to slow down.  I didn't say I was done...so I kept the throttle pinned and didn't budge when he tried to move in, thus going around him.

I'm not saying it was smart...but it sure as hell was fun.

Then i went to bed feeling great....and woke up with a bit of a headache.  I figured I'd eat something because it was about 1PM when I woke up.  My stomach didn't really like that and shortly thereafter the toilet and I were face to face.  I still haven't eaten anything since.  Funny part was I actually thought of thejoefrom1993's video where he said he had a phobia of throwing up.

On the bright side, no headache anymore.

Hacked

Backstory:  I own 3 dedicated servers.  I run one website off of these 3 servers.  It's load balanced across all 3.  I also have a few websites on one of these servers and only on that server.  In the recent past this server in particular was the target of an attack and somehow the attacker got in and made a backdoor for himself.

Today:  The aforementioned hacker let himself into the same server and wreacked havoc.  I'm part of an IRC network and they were able to traverse a few of the servers on the network because of my compromised server.  All 3 of my servers are part of this IRC network.  The server that was hacked also went down tonight.  I'll most likely have the datacenter reimage it in the next few days.  I was able to take a few of the websites off of it before it died tonight.  I'm just plain pissed that it got hacked in the first place.  Don't these people have anything better to do with their time?  I work hard to pay for my servers.  The money doesn't come out of thin air.  These bastards have the balls to fuck with something that I pay for every month.

I hate people.  I find them fascinating, but some people are just so selfish that I can honestly say I hate them.

Life lessons of the real world - cont'd

My story continues, as you can obviously guess from the title.  I got to choose which department to be on.  I chose to go back to front end with the manager I like and after a sit-down with the CTO of the company we concluded I'd be on as a special projects developer for the front end.  I would be a shared resource for both departments but primarily front end.  Basically this means that, for the time being, nothing will change with my current projects.  I'm glad everything worked out the way it did and I'm sure once October 2009 comes around I'll be looking for a new job.

As special projects developer for the front end my projects could range from back-end, flash, SQL, and AJAX as well as front end.  All technologies I'm familiar with and I'll be glad to use all my skills.  I'll also be partnered with a back-end developer for some projects to gain more back-end experience.  If nothing more, my time at the company has been one big learning experience.  I've learned more about people, Javascript, Flash (AS2 and AS3), PHP, and HTML/CSS than I knew going in.  I've grown as a person and I've also grown more cautious.  Sometimes it's the bad experiences that shape us most.  I know I've learned a lot.

Life lessons of the real world

I'm not going to lie, you're going to see a lot of work-related posts in this blog.  The fact is I code for a living and it's what I love to do so it stands to reason that since it's not only what I love but what I do every day that I'll have quite a few blogs about it.  That being said, I wish to share one of life's lessons with you.

Today - Monday, October 20th, 2008 - I learned a valuable life lesson about trust.  As many of you know, trust is hard to gain and easily broken.  Trust is terribly fragile and once betrayed, it's very hard to establish a relationship with the person that betrayed said trust.  Some people are out for themselves, it's a fact of life.  That's not necessarily a bad thing because, in the end, it's simply animal instinct to make sure you come out on top - survival of the fittest, if you will.

You might be wonder what I'm babbling about.  It boils down to the fact that I had my 6 month review today at work.  I thought it went fairly well.  I didn't get the raise I wanted but I got a bonus and I was told the raise would most certainly happen at the 1 year mark, mainly because the company is slowly being drained of funds by unmentionable sources.  I left the meeting with a good feeling.  I was sure my faith in the company, and most importantly my boss, had been renewed (we had a bit of a blowout last week when he managed to come down on the whole department because he was having a bad week).  I knew he had lied to me before but I figured I could get past it and continue a working relationship with him.  After all, I'm still getting paid.  I found out later in the day that although he presented me with two options during our meeting, one of those options had money attached which was not mentioned.  In retrospect he led me to the choice he wanted me to make and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.  Mind you that I have yet to sign a contract with the terms we agreed to in that office and I most certainly won't sign anything until I explore all the possibilities open to me.

I'm very childlike in my mentality.  To me, things tend to be black or white.  I'm a developer, I guess you can say I see things as binary or boolean, 1 or 0, true or false.  I tend to trust those around me.  It's clearly not the best practice but at the same time I don't wish to be closed to the world and unapproachable.  It seems I merely need to open my eyes instead of needing somebody to accidentally tell me something for it to hit me.  Maybe I'm not ready for the real world.  The real world is ugly, full of lies and betrayal.  It's a place for the battle-hardened.  I find it difficult to justify what happened in that office today.  I can't comprehend what motivation he had to mislead me (or lead me, in this case).  I have a lot of growing ahead of me and a big decision to make in the next few days.

I originally thought of quitting because I can't work for somebody who is going to constantly lie to me and I'm supposed to trust that this person is relaying my messages to upper management and back in the chain of command.  I'm not sure I can deal with the pressures of work as well as having to worry about what he's lied to me about today.  However I also thought of the fact that I'm not there to understand him.  I'm there for me and to further my career.  If I make as much money as possible at the company and put as many projects as possible on my resumé it can only benefit me and I'll have a huge stepping stone for my next job.

I'll have to see what I end up doing in the next few days.

What happens when you get old

A few months ago my grandmother's health began to decline. My mom hopped on a flight last week. She feared it may be the last time she saw my grandmother alive and it's been 2-3 years since they last saw each other. It seems she took a turn for the worse and now my aunt will be flying out. I have to drive her to the airport. Her flight leaves at 7 so we need to be there a few hours before then.

Tonight won't be fun. Not sure if I'll even go to work tomorrow. Maybe I'll go late after a decent bit of rest. I told them today that I wasn't sure if I'd be coming in tomorrow. We'll see how this goes.

When I was young (about 5-6) I had such a fear of getting old and dying. I would cry and come up with theories on how to beat death. I thought you didn't die until you hit the floor. I remember thinking that if I held on to something I wouldn't fall, thus not dying.

I'd rather not think about death and it's inevitability. I'd rather think about life and its inconceivable complexity.

A nice surprise

I woke up this morning to realize I already had somebody not only read my first blog but also take the time to post a comment. I wasn't expecting anybody to have read it yet since I only created it last night around midnight.

I plan on eventually writing real blogs but for now I'll be blogging about blogging. I'll bring in parts of my day so it's not terribly boring. I also don't plan on blogging every day or that'll be boring. I'll blog every few days or if something eventful happens. In the meantime, check out Joe's vlog and blog and Josh's blog - both far better than mine.

On a sidenote, I've been working on some flash at work. I'm not sure I can legally tell you exactly what it is but I can tell you it's for Playboy's apparel site and it's my first major flash project. I coded it in ActionScript 3 and it's pretty damn cool. I'll link to it when it's complete. That should be in 1-2 weeks.

Back to basics

I thought I had left the blogging life behind. I guess I thought wrong.  I was never terribly good at blogging but always wanted to express myself.  I find myself to be far more eloquent in writing than I tend to be verbally.  Perhaps it's the fact that I have time to compose my thoughts - though most of my writing is stream of consciousness anyway.

I've recently been intrigued by the idea of vlogging and I'm not terribly sure I'd be any better at it that than I am at blogging but, as I said before, it intrigued me. Maybe it's already past its prime, too popular, too mainstream. Who knows. Maybe I'll work up to it regardless of its social status in the public eye.

For now, I'll settle for blogging and attempting to make my life a bit more interesting so others may want to read about it. Come back soon and see how it turns out.