so right. this is my second day of self-employment. what a feeling! well, really, it feels like i'm unemployed. but that feels pretty ok, too. i have another full day of playing and shopping and planning and eating and napping and surfing. sweet.
so last night we went to the kava bar. it was pretty mellow and relaxing. ernie cruz jr. and barry flanagan (two well-known hawaiian musicians) were there, though they didn't perform. it was my first time there, and i really liked it. i came out feeling aware, but entirely relaxed. it's definitely a fun experience, though i don't think i'd become a regular there.
ok. enough of the computering. there's more than enough of that on the horizon for me. i'm off to do unemployed-man things. like burping and napping and scratching. something like that.
so this is my second day of unemployment. i know it's still the weekend, so it might not count, but knowing that i don't have to go to work monday (or that job ever again) is just kind of liberating. but there's no relaxing for me. no no. i have a full day of surfing and shopping and healthcare signing-up and renovation-planning and napping.
anyone read this and live in hawaii and want to play monday and/or tuesday?
this is my last official day of being an employee. after today, i'm going to be either unemployed or self-employed. so you could say that i've stuck it to the man. although it might be more accurate to say that i'm taking a temporary break from the man and i'm asking him to please let me survive as painlessly and effortlessly as possible.
the task of naming my company will be the hardest upcoming hurdle. i hope you can help me, america.
i just need to get through the next 8 hours. then i'm free. remember that "free" is accurate depending on how loosely you define it.
this is my last week at this job. i thought i'd be cruising through this week. i have "transitioning" to take care of: teaching the younger people things, imparting my wisdom, eating free food. i was wrong.
i'm out in the field all week. sweating and doing things related to sewer manholes. delightful.
anyway, posts will be sparse. but i will leave you with this article from wired. i don't know how i end up reading stuff like this, but i do. it's also something to note how ridiculous things become a reality thanks to the internet.
XXXChurch wants no more XXX. it's about some online religious support group who helps people who are victims of the serious problem of self-gratification.
my favorite exerpt from the article:
Here's what the pastors recommend instead of self-gratification:
"Remain calm and tell yourself, 'You don't own me, masturbation! I'm taking my life back!' (or something of that nature). If that doesn't work, you can pursue alternatives like chewing gum, blasting John Lennon's song 'Cold Turkey,' eating chocolate or whatever helps you best (not masturbation)."
"Every time you masturbate....God kills a kitten."
so yeah, two questions: what is wrong with these people? and why am i reading this crap?
i gave blood yesterday. it was good. i even got a nice and pretty girl taking my blood. she surfs and she's 26 and lives at home with her mother and step-father....and her son. oof. not that i'm against kids. i'm all for kids. i just don't think i am (nor are my friends) in the position to give bonus points to girls who are also mothers. there's really no way to say that without opening myself up to be yelled at. so maybe i'll just point out that i have a girlfriend. so it's a moo point: "like what the cow says. it doesn't matter. it's 'moo'."
shh...keep reading. changing subject.
ok. with my karma recharged, i went to my favorite sushi place, genki sushi. look at the logo. the little yellow-faced man. he's angry. that's why i maintain that the translation is "angry sushi." my japanese friends, however, disagree. (it apparently means "well" or "fine" or something. like, "are you ok?" "yes. i'm all genki" or something.)
i have simple goals for the weekend. goals that i can accomplish. maybe.
1) finish harassing people for my free tv. bugging my friends to join so i can get a free tv has made me hate myself. i need to get it over with as soon as i can. and if it eventually makes me hate my free tv, i'll be left with nothing.
2) playing basketball. our (formerly undefeated!) company basketball team had a humiliating 20-point loss this past wednesday. we had gone 7-0 by beating each team in the league. i was sick. and i have a whole bunch of other excuses. but we're gonna win the next game. we just gotta. it's not just a basketball game, it's engineering-league basketball!
3) begin plans for renovating my place. since i'm taking a new job, it seems that i've decided to stay in hawaii for at least another year. and, as a friend pointed out, i live as if i'm a temporary resident. my place is ok. things are set up good enough, but not set up well. the 20-year old kitchen could use a re-do, as could the bathroom. the electrical wiring could use some work, too. there's so much that could be done, and no real reason not to start. this weekend will mark the beginning. even if it's just a sheet of paper with some notes, the process will start.
i'm gonna start small. the new job came along with a free student planner. i haven't owned or used one of those since highschool. i'm hoping that writing stuff down might help me keep track of those things. ugh. we'll see.
eric "slimy salesman" lau is still without free tv. i'm also constantly worried that the friends that have already signed up will be screwed somehow and will hate me forever. just like last time. ugh.
here's some articles (from the wired and the new york sun) that talk about the free stuff marketing scheme:
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64614,00.html
i have no doubts now that i will get my tv if 8 friends sign up. we're at 4, america. let's make this happen!
http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com/default.aspx?referer=7895886
thanks to mark for making me the "blog of the week" and (maybe) sending more readers my way. i guess i need to step it up a bit and lose the lame posts i often revert to.
so right. it'll be a day of new things. new posts! new omlets made by my coworkers (something i'm really gonna miss at my new job). maybe even a new motivation to do work! eh.
"what's the new job gonna be?" you ask. we'll, i'll tell you. i'll working on IT projects for my highschool. they're trying to put their application process online and their HR department tied into the same system everyone else uses. those kinds of things. it's gonna require a lot of knowledge that i'm not sure i have. so i'll either have to admit my ignorance and appear really dumb a lot of the time, or i'll have to refine my bullshitting. it'll be a game-time decision.
so right. back to my highschool. it's actually a k-12 kind of place. when did i start going there? yup, that's right: k. (quick math for everybody: i'm 25, and spent 13 years, or HALF MY LIFE, at that place.) i'm even considered to be a part of a special club: the 13+ club. when i got to kindergarden, some of my classmates had already been there for a while, hence the "+". so right. the point is that i'm gonna return to so familiar of a place, but in a very unfamiliar role. it's gonna be a trip.
i know the place inside and out. i know the little shortcuts behind the buildings, the spots in the field where the sprinkler water pools up and gets the grass soggy, even the tricky way to get your language lab timecard stamped so that you get credited for twice the amount of time you spent in there. but what i realized is that there's a whole different world there on campus that i know nothing about. a world that i have never even stepped foot in: the faculty- and staff-only areas. i can only imagine that they're magical places of coffee machines and couches and angry teachers plotting to ruin their students lives. where red pens grow on trees and talk of the merits of the louisiana purchase can be heard in the whirring of the air conditioning. I'm gonna be allowed up to the second-floor "faculty dining room" that i've never laid eyes on.
then there's the world-class facilities to be happy about. i don't know how it was for you, but when i went to college, i assumed things would be bigger and better than stuff in highschool. and while, for the most part, that was true at MIT (bigger labs, better scientific equipment, larger auditoriums, etc), the athletic facilities were pretty embarassing. my highschool has far better athletic resources than MIT does. they say that some of the atheletes going to the 2000 summer olympics, on their way to sydney, stopped in hawaii to have a more gradual time zone adjustment. and where did they train on their spot in hawaii? yup. my highschool's track and pool. if all goes well, meaning i can make friends with the athletic department people, i'll have keys to the weightroom, gym, and pool. sweet.
but it won't all be fun and games. oh no. there's the problem with kids today. not their being irresponsible or foolish or unwilling to dedicate themselves entirely to the pursuit of knowledge. those have always been problems. i'm talking about the ridiculously skimpy outfits that the girls wear. have you seen how highschool girls dress nowadays? i find it amazing how their shorts can be that low rise and that high cut at the same time. there's effectively only 4 or 5 inches of "short" from top to bottom. i know girls didn't dress like this while i was in school. if they did, i wouldn't have gotten anything done. the other problem is that they just don't look like highschool girls. they wear more makeup, make themselves look far more mature than they can back up with their actions, and are setting themselves (and probably all of the boy in highschool) up for some tough times ahead.
when i was a junior in highschool, the abandoned the explicitly laid out dress code that called for fingertip length skirts and shorts and no bare midrifts. at the time, i thought it was the best idea ever. i think somewhat differently now. more proof that i'm getting older.
the reason the girls are even brought up is the rumored troubles a classmate ran into. word on the street is that he mysteriously left his job because he was caught staring at some girls changing before or after practice. scary stuff. i plan to not look at girls ever. they're kind of icky anyway. and that way, i won't have to make up a story explaining my mysteriously quitting my job and leaving the island. it's a win-win.
oh the whole, i think it's gonna be a great thing. no, not as great as the omlet i just ate, but great enough for me.
my friends have been slacking. i'm still not there.
here's an mit forum on the concept:
http://mitegg.proboards20.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=print&num=1090009016.
go there to see how real mit people interact with other human beings: online!
it looks legit, people. help me get a free tv.
http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com/default.aspx?referer=7895886
my two weeks' notice has been given to my bosses. this is the change that's been coming for weeks now. and this was the final wheel that had to be set into motion. the contract is settled and the new job will start on sept 1st.
it was amazing how well my bosses took it. they seemed excited for me, gave me the polite amount of praises for my work here, and were interested in what i was doing next. for the last 3 days, i've been stressing about how the tendering of my resignation would go, but i found out that i really had no need to worry.
so there it is. i'm gonna miss the flex time that made it so easy to surf before and/or after work. a nerf basketball hoop like the one hanging on the outside of my cubicle wall probably won't be there at the next job. and i'm sure regular blog posting during the day will have to be put on hold. ugh. there are so many great things about working here. i feel kinda bad about getting so caught up in the few bad parts. well, not reall, cause the bad parts were pretty infuriating sometimes. but my point is that now that i'm looking back at it all, it was really good. a very positive experience that i'm a better person for going through.
so what's the new job? that'll come later. i just wanted to focus today on leaving the old one. cause it was good. they're nice people. even the grumpy old yelling guy. he's pretty ok. even when he's yelling at me. i can't find nice stuff to say about the idiot old guy, but that's ok. i just won't mention him. the bastard.
but yay! the post was supposed to be happy and nice. and it is! look! happy! nice! yay!
remember when i said that a change is gonna come? really, who knows if i'm telling the truth or spewing more of my crap. and let's face it, i have a lot of crap to spew. and i rather enjoy spewing it.
anyway, the change is here! "here!" i say. it's all crazy and stuff. uh....yeah. i'm nervous and excited and i don't know what to do with myself. but i'm holding the announcement about what the change is until tomorrow evening. this might be the only time in this site's history where there's a chance that people would want to come back to see what will happen. i hope i don't blow it.
so i just realized that i'm gonna be living where i'm living now for at least another year. i'm not living some kind of nomadic existence that i once did. the idea of "i don't know how long i'll really living here" won't hold up as an excuse to live like a slob. not anymore. bleh.
so right, there's the garbage disposal change from last weekend and the motivating that it did. and that's still on the short-term to-do list. but i'm trying to make other changes, too. and all of it seem so damn grown-up, it's scaring me.
i'm starting to actually keep track of my money and where it's going and how it's being saved and how things are being paid off. i'm learning, however slowly, about taxes and percentages and deductions. the more i learn about it, the less of a scary thing it becomes, and the frightened i become of myself and my growing up.
i think i ground myself in reality pretty well, though. sure, i can get freaked out about not knowing what i want to do when i'm grown up and how i'm going to afford the fabulous life of donald trump. but i can also realize that i know people who are part-time lifeguards only, people who quit their jobs and change career paths in their late-30s, who are doing fine. things are gonna be ok. i guess it's good to worry about stuff, to plan for and figure out stuff, but to not let that paralyze me. i gotta keep on moving. there are scary steps that i'm gonna start taking pretty soon. i just gotta do it.
(and me)
http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com/default.aspx?referer=7895886
here's the deal:
-you sign up for a something something (AOL, BMG, Columbia House) under my referer url above.
-you get 5 friends to sign up under your referer url.
-you get a free flatscreen.
-if i have 5 friends that are as cool as you, i get a free flatscreen.
everybody wins!
BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE! sure, you can actually pay for things like AOL, BMG, or Columbia House. OR you could sign up for something like RealRhapsody, wait the required 2 days, then cancel your subscription before the free 14 day trial period is over. then, you pay NOTHING and we all get things FREE!
Let's make this happen, people.
(thanks, mark, for the idea. i hope you can get the 3 more friends you need)
bush is against legacy-biased admissions to colleges. yet he's a third-generation yale graduate. it's the kind of thing that's so ridiculous, you start to question yourself. i sat here reading the article saying to myself, "what the...? wait. why would he...? but didn't...? ok. i have no idea." i have no idea why anyone would vote for him. maybe i don't belong in this country...
my kitchen sink's garbage disposal crapped out on me. yesterday, it was time to put in a new one. i went online to see how long it would take me and what supplies i'd need. i had all the tools they said i'd need, and they gave a sliding scale of the time required. times required: professional: 30min. "handy": 45 min. novice: 1hr30min.
now, i wouldn't say i'm a professional, but i'd like to think i'm not a novice. i know my way around tools and things, so i'd think it'd take me on the 45min side of things.
first, i make a run for the hardware store and buy a new garbage disposal. i opted to replace my 1/2 horse power disposal with a 5/8 hp model, an upgrade of 1/8 of a horse. sweet.
i get home and take out the old one. easy. were these pipes suppose to break? uh...no. but i see that the 15-20 years these pipes have been here have really left their mark. aside from simply becoming disconnected from each other, the pipes themselves cracked. eesh. so this is a good thing; i'm replacing pipes that might have broken on me any day now. bad side of it: i'm quickly approaching the "novice" time limit.
so get in the car and race to the hardware store. it's closed. frick. call up home depot. open 'til 10. sweet. drive to home depot and pick up the needed pipes. they come in these little bags that include all the necessary connectors and things. brilliant.
i get home and assemble all the pipes, but then i realize that one of the pipes that didn't fall off just yet was about to. and when i try connect all the pipes, i'm missing two connector-pieces. dammit.
so, my completion time? 12 hours and counting. i didn't have the energy to go back to home depot. i'll just swing by on my way home from work. i'd like to think that i'm still handy, and that these little unpredictable things popped up. or maybe if i had all the neccessary materials i'd be a pro. but i suppose knowing which materials to buy and how to prepare for these unexpected things is what makes you the pro, not just your ability to screw two pipe connectors together.
the official assessment? i'm about one-twelfth of a novice. but i hope to have it done by today.
also, i'm trying to get motivated to do some actual renovations to my place. maybe replace the entire kitchen (counters, cabinets, tiled floors) and the bathroom (tiled floors, toilet, mirror, etc), or more. so if you have ideas or websites that will let me know how to combine prettiness with functionality in my home, let me know. i think i'm really going to need the help.
so there was a time when the celtics were good. like, really good. really, really good. then they turned all lame. then i went to school in boston. walker and pierce just didn't do it for me. i think walker is a whiney loser. any wonder why he's been traded here and there and everywhere? not really. and paul pierce just seems lame. sorry.
but today, i guess i'll start to not dislike them as much. in a trade with LA, they just got gary payton and got back rick fox. good times ahead.
now, i'm not sure of the reason, but rick fox has been my least-hated laker. and that almost means that i like him. and he's married to vanessa williams. would you rather be like rick fox, be decent and solid at basketball and have a hot, successful wife? or be like kobe, and be a dominant player in the game and be raping girls in colorado? i'm picking the rick fox route, thanks. and he's going back to the team he was drafted by. what's better than that? (besides them winning) not too much.
and payton isn't really a laker. and while he's similar to karl malone in his quest for the ring, he just doesn't seem like such a prick. i've already said how i feel about karl, but that's not the point here.
i don't think this'll really do all that much for boston winning more games. what it will do is make me actually have someone to cheer for when i see them play in those green jerseys on that strangely-patterned hardwood floor.
a few days after i got back from new zealand, my mother called. she told me about the cruise that her and my father went on. she loved everything about it. she even was impressed by her room's bathroom (she would later email me 5 pictures of the bathroom). she briefly asked about new zealand; i gave my quick recap and told her about the vacation pics i put up.
then my father got on the phone. i don't remember the exact wording, but the conversation went something like this:
dad: so how was new zealand?
me: it was good. fun and busy and exciting and beautiful.
dad: did you know that uncle roy went there?
me: yes. you've told me many times.
dad: yeah. and he ate the butter and then he needed to have gall bladder removed. he got gall stones. because the butter is rich. rich. butter is very rich.
me: yeah. the butter there is really good.
dad: ok, so did you see the native new zealand people? new zealanders. the native people?
me: not really. we went to this cultural show thing, but it was kind of fabricated.
dad: because, have you heard of rockerfeller?
me: the oil tycoon?
dad: what?
me: rockefeller center in new york - rockefeller?
dad: yes. one of his sons or something. he went to new zealand to see the pigmies or something native and they cooked him and ATE HIM.
me: what?
dad: yeah. they didn't eat you, did they?
me: uh...no, dad. they didn't eat me.
dad: huh. because they ate him, you know. they are really crazy over there.
me: wait. uh...yeah. crazy.
dad: ok. here's mom.
he was close with his story. but michael rockefeller actually went to new guinea. not to say that new zealander people might not eat me. cause who knows? but then again, there's some theories about him not being eaten at all. so maybe my dad's just crazy.
crazy or not, i sure am gonna warn my kids when i think people are going to cook and eat them.
so i got this really bad headache yesterday around lunchtime. i have no idea where it came from or why it was so bad. it's 24 hours later and it hasn't left me yet. it's making me hate everybody.
at what point should i start worrying that it's lasting too long?
i tried to wake up this morning at 6am. my body violently disagreed. well, not really violent, more of a non-active, civil disobedience kind of thing. anyway, i was up by 8 and running by 8:20. running was painful. it was the kind of run that can only produce a moderate trot even though i was giving all that i had. stretching hurt, too. as did showering, somehow.
now i'm at the office trying to catch up on 3 weeks of work that has piled up.
but then i realize how ok i am, how ok i feel. you know how when you have a cold or sore throat, you think about how wonderful just feeling normal would be? but then by the time you feel better, you can't really enjoy how good it feels, since the pain is so far in the past?
i took a minute just now to realize how good i feel. even with my slightly aching ankle and mildly tight back, i feel pretty ok. and i'm not gonna focus on the unnecessarily long time it is taking for the accounting department to get my my reimbursement check. i'm not gonna complain or criticize. i'm just gonna sit here and feel normal. cause my normal is pretty good.
the running commentary is in the captions of the pics. so look at them all (there's not that many) to get the full story.