Punkie's Online Diary
The Ongoing Saga of Punkie into the 21st Century

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Friday, January 31, 2003

Okay... s'not funny anymore!

Thursday, I had all I could stands, and I could stands no more. I went and saw the doctor. Not only was my finger throbbing, but my sinuses were on fire. Sure enough, an ENT infection. More antibiotics for me... more work missed... dammit.

It's hard to believe that so much snot can come from one head, let me tell you. Of course, since I am going off that gatsro thing from last month, it feels relatively not as bad. Although my sinus headache was so bad, I was going around the house, walking like Ozzy Osbourne, screaming at things in general. My wife got sick, too, so all of us are now ill. Major suckage.

Of course, the doctor's visit was pretty humorous. My doctor's office has three physicians. One really good one (our doctor), one that is okay but rather cold and standoffish, and then one who is a big bag of guess who doesn't respect women very much. I got the last one, and he's this guy with a thick accent, and he was okay, and seemed to know what he was doing. But his assistant was a total putz.

This girl is some woman who has far too much makeup, and obviously gets her tips from Cosmopolitan... except the part where it says to "keep a natural look." The first obvious feature that leaps from her face into your plane of view is the lips. They are brown. Brown and outlined in a darker brown. Not a natural brown, either, but more of a sienna that occurs in cheap brands of wood stain. They are also about 20% too small for her real lip line, and sick out too far on each lip. The effect, I would guess, is to make her lips look small and pouty, but I doubt even a teen without a mirror or any good friends would have done such a bad job on their lips as this woman has. It's such a stark contrast to the rest of the face, it almost looks like she's holding a large copper coin in her clenched lips. The rest of her face is over-painted and over-powered, with a CLEAR line of beginning and end where she stopped the process below her jawline that gives such a two-tone color with a solid border, it's like a political map boundary of some Middle Eastern nation and their neighbor. Her makeup is also two shades lighter than her natural skin tone, giving her natural tan look slightly ashen. Her false eyelashes were too thick for as short as they were, and her eyeshadow was the same color as that sparkly brown color they make for model speedboats that faded to an almost gold. This made her eyes look sunken, as if each eye was some black sun fading into a polluted skyline.

This might have been forgivable, except she was dumb as a bag of burnt hair. It took her about five times to get my blood pressure, couldn't find my pulse, and when she weighed me, she thought I was 259 lbs. Okay, now Uncle Punkie ain't no suave beast of grace and slimness. I know I wasn't no 259 lbs, and I feared when I next got weighed, it would show I gained 40 lbs. Finally, I convinced her I was 308 (a drift between 300 and 315), and she said "Ohhh... you blood praysoor ees beddy high... you shoult DOO samting abut det!" I told her I took blood pressure medication, and she says, "Ohhh... okee. What kind?" I told her, but the second I said the medications, she gave me this look like I suddenly shouted in a fake language. So she asked me, "No no hon. What numboor?" What number? I told you, 120 milligrams of... "NO no... I need [gasp, fumble] ... thee numboooor! Nooomber. You know, you call dee pharmacee and you tell dem de noomber..." My RX number? "Yays." I don't know. "Ooooh... okee..." Then she wrote down I was on something called "orthoevra" (which phonetically doesn't even sound similar to what I take), but my doctor laughed when he read the chart and asked why I took an transdermal estrogen supplement, and looked at my arm to be sure I wasn't taking birth control or incorrectly described my sex.

Dear God. But I got my antibiotics, and already, I am feeling way better.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:52 PM EST [Link]


Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Cats and Dogs, Living Together, Mass Hysteria!

... one of my favorite lines from Ghostbusters. Cosmo is proving to be a very naughty kitty. First, he tears up toilet paper rolls. I mean, like finds whole ones and shreds them. Second, he gets onto counters, and knocks food and food wrappers onto the floor, where the dogs run off with them. Since CR is in charge of Cosmo, I say it's his responsibility to clean up Cosmo's mess. Getting a preteen to clean up a mess... sigh. No wonder I am so behind on housework.

I finally got Christmas decorations put away. When my fever stopped yesterday (and before my nose ran like it's doing now), I took the multitude of boxes stacked in the living room, sorted the contents, and put everything away back in the attic (if it was heat-tolerant) or the guestroom closet. It took me several hours. I also managed to cut myself on a piece of broken glass ornament, and now I think the cut got infected. A sliver, I think, has gotten deep between the corner of the nail and the quick, and now it's all swollen and painful.

I am still sick, but my son seems better at least. Actually, I am better, but when my fever was gone, my sinuses swelled, and now my nose is running and running. Yuck. But I can at least go back to work tomorrow.

Random link. Crab gets sucked in by pipe at deep sea pressure depths. Not a pretty thing to watch. Film at 11.

My web site will go under a total redesign in the next few months, so start watching for it. One of the major revisions is a total color change from the older "Green on Black" to a new "Black on Light Blue" which I find is easier to read in the daylight (along with everyone who complained green on black was hard on the eyes). I am still working out major sections and whatnot, trying to figure out themes for my site that are professional and yet unique.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:40 PM EST [Link]


Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Fighting the Sickness

It's like 1:30 am in the wee early morning, and I am fighting the flu. I have my moments where I am feeling great, then the aches start, then they go away, then my temperature rises, then it falls... I am taking Echinacea and the other anti-flu medicine, and I can only imagine the fight that must be going on in there. I took Tylenol PM but I still am not sleepy.

I never used to get sick. As a kid, I got sick maybe 2-3 times a year. One would be some huge Ear/Nose/Throat infection that required antibiotics (every winter!), and the others would be mild colds. Nothing special. When I was a teen, though, I started having "hay fever." It was always diagnosed as "hay fever" because my father refused to believe even THAT was real. My father never got any medical advice, in fact, only twice did I ever see him take off sick from work: when he got a massive stomach flu, and when he got a hernia. I guess that meant he was either really healthy or just used denial for the rest. Both of them left him in bed, and very, very cranky. So we had a rule in my house: in order to stay home from school, my temperature had to be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Or I had to actually have a "witnessed" vomiting spell (I am not sure where my mother thought I could have fake vomit stored, but that was her reason for "proof of vomit"). Diarrhea? Ha ha... the school has bathrooms, don't they? Snot running out my nose like a faucet? Here's a dish towel. The pattern usually was I'd go to school sick, go see the nurse, and she'd send me home. Since my mother was not allowed to drive, a neighbor usually had to pick me up, and I'd get hell for that. "Mrs. Wickland doesn't have time in her day to ferry my child around because he has the sniffles..." my mother would say in a "I'm warning you..." tone. Sadly, if I was sick and my mother was drunk, that was a big problem. First off, you couldn't call yourself in sick as a student. Second, if I went to the school nurse, she'd call home, and if my mother answered the phone, my nurse got an earful from a depressed drunk who would go on and on about how she should be happy, but isn't. Or my mother would not answer the phone... and they'd call my father. I only had that happen once, and I learned my lesson. The hard way. So with all this going on, it was a good thing I rarely got sick. And every spring, my nose would run and run and run... I'd go through two or three dish towels in one school day... but that was "hay fever" described with the same tone of voice as if there was really no such thing.

Turns out this "hay fever" went undiagnosed for so long, it turned into "asthma," when I got older. One day, around age 21, I stopped breathing. Well, okay, my breathing was not working effectively. I was rushed to the hospital, blue in the face, and put on a respirator. "You have asthma," they said when I came around. "No I don't," I said. "Oh yes you do," they said, "that medicine you have been breathing in is a bronchial dilator. You are responding to it like any other asthmatic. Here's a brochure." They also gave me something called "Seldane," which later changed to "Allegra," and is currently "Zyrtec." The first day I was on Seldane, I noticed this annoying ability to smell things. I mean, I was able to smell strong odors before, but never like this. Food tasted better, flowers smelled like perfume instead of weak cut grass, and... wow. Of course, now I could smell sweat, urine in the alleys, and body odor. It was very distracting, and to this day, scent is still a rather new sensation that distracts me. Later, I started taking Allegra on a daily dose, and I no longer used my Venolin (now Atrovent) inhaler as much. In fact, I use it... maybe once every two months. More in spring and fall, almost none in summer and winter.

I still didn't get sick much, but as I got older, I started getting sick 4 times a year, then 5... and now it's like 8-10, and some of them are BRUTAL, like my double-pneumonia last year, and my gastro-interitus last month. It really increased after I did a year and a half as the International Help Desk. The combination of lack of sleep, job stress, and hours really kicked me to the ground and beat me mercilessly. My blood pressure soared, my asthma got worse, I started to have long periods of sluggishness and malaise. The lead guy at our desk told me he got addicted to Nyquil, because it was the only way he could sleep anymore. Well, I got promoted out of that job in late 1999, but I think I am still trying to make up for sleep, and I definitely get a lot sicker more often than I used to. And when you are too weak to fight off illness, you get depressed, which is kind of why I write. But I didn't have time to write. So my depression would creep in, and try and cover me like a soft, warm blanket. A warm blanket given to you almost out of love... then it smothers you.

I feel a little better, and finally a little sleepy. If I don't feel well in 4 hours (when I have to get up), I am calling in sick.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:31 AM EST [Link]


Monday, January 27, 2003

Superbowl Sunday Sickness

I don't follow football, in fact, I hate sports. But we have a big screen TV, and I have always thought that those who like football would love to come to my house to see their game on a big TV. Well, that didn't happen initially. This weekend, though, we were invited to our friend Cjae's house, who had a Super Bowl party where they mostly sew, crochet, and watch the commercials. But then a bunch of our other friends wanted to spend time with us, and so we couldn't invite them to Cjae's house, because she only had so much room. So we had our own party. Then a lot of these people who begged us to have one flaked. Or could not show up because they were sick. But we did have Sara, Roberta, and Josh, and Christine made her famous meatball sandwiches. I made a fire that roared nicely. Josh explained football to me, which was great because I don't understand a thing. The whole "Ten Yard Rule" opened up a vast array of "Why are they... oh, that makes sense..." Also he explained that sometimes player threw out of bounds on purpose to the opposing team does not get the ball. Thanks for the lessons, Josh!

But other than the great banter my friends provide, I couldn't enjoy myself though for two reasons. First, I came down with some flu later on in the day. I blame a guy at that anime meeting who shook my hand, then wiped it under his nose, apologizing for being sick. Then he breathed on me, but I needed to talk with him, since he's on my "Who's Katsu is it Anyway" half-time show for Cosplay at Katsucon, where I am the moderator this year (abuse will rule). I washed my hands with some alcohol-based sanitizer I reserve in my backpack for such occasions. Then, later on that night, my stomach reacted like I ate eggs or beans (both which I am violently allergic to), and I was sick to my stomach until 4am before it... er, "passed." Then the rest of Sunday, I felt stiff and achy, but thought I was just tired... until...

The second reason was that work called just before the Superbowl half-time show, and our network was a victim (it seems, looking at all this in hindsight) that the SQL virus/DoS attack flooded our company over the weekend. I had to get in and fix some of the aftermath, only to find out it was mostly still going on. It didn't stop until this morning, where the database had a lot of open tickets on the various Cisco routers affected. Internal Computing is in a lot of trouble. Luckily, I am not in Internal Computing, I just hate them from time to time because they foul up so much. So for hours, I was dialed into work, praying what I needed done could be done without having to get dressed for work. I succeeded, because what couldn't be done, couldn't have been done for work, either.

But the added stress of this made me even sicker, and by 10pm, I was shaking with high fever, cursing my immune system which had failed yet again. I was so sick. I took some Tylenol PM, but it didn't put me to sleep fast enough. Then I took some Echinacea and some sort of "Flu-preventer" which you are supposed to take at first onset of flu symptoms. It doesn't cure the flu, but does make it shorter in length. I am happy to report that I finally went to sleep around 11pm, and then woke up with very little symptoms, little enough that going to work was not a problem. Right now, I feel a little sick, but not like shaking with fever, suffering pain in my joints, or wishing I was dead so I could rest. I took some more of those meds, and I hope they hold out until I can get home.

I seem to have gotten sick so much in the last few months. Two bad ones (one really bad), and several smaller ones that lasted for days. I have lost many days of work because of some illness or another. I wonder if my body is just stressed out and finally just went mutinous on my lifestyle. If I get really sick again? I am going to the doctor and find out if maybe there's something deeper wrong with me.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:03 AM EST [Link]


Sunday, January 26, 2003

Lewis Black, Money, and Lolita

Intriguing title, is it not? Here we go...

LEWIS BLACK
You've seen him on the Daily Show, and perhaps his own comedy specials. He's a hysterical guy who acts like at any moment he's going burst a vein and die of a heart attack because the world is so irritatingly confusing. I can relate. Well, I got to meet him, sort of. Actually, my wife and friend Brad did, because I am not much to going up to famous people out of the blue. But they are, and they got his autograph on his CDs we just bought (handily available at the DC Improv gift show, which is also their sound booth). On Friday night, we went and saw him at the DC Improv, and I thought he was funny on TV, but in person... dear God, he's hysterical. He's funny because he's clever, speaks the truth, and says stuff I have been saying for years. After the show, Christine and Brad went up to him and spoke with him. I didn't because... well, like I already said, I don't do that. I would if I felt like I had something poignant to say, but man, he just said it all. So Jeni (who also went) and I sat down in the thinning crowds, and Brad and Christine went to go see him. I have always felt like I would never approach someone out of the blue just to get an autograph or gibber some praise like a thousand star-struck fanboys before me. Year of training in sci-fi cons, and seeing autograph-weary celebrities give a fake smile to be nice when all the want to do is get in a cab and go to bed in some anonymous hotel room had drummed that into me. Celebrities are just like people, and you should treat them as such. But I did envy my wife just a little.

I AM OUT OF MONEY
I hate this time of year. I am always out of money, and no matter what I do, I am always having to tell my family, "Listen, about that restaurant bill we have. $606 to a sub shop?" I swear one Chinese delivery restaurant is going to put their kids through college because of us. Then there's all the expenses we didn't foresee, and it always seems like we're living way beyond our means. I mean, we're not destitute, and as long as we're still employed, we'll survive, but this sucks anyway.

LOLITA
Today, something shocked and sickened me. I didn't think it was possible, and it's still reeling in my brain. I mean, I know about child porn in a sort of abstract term, and I don't come across it because I don't really seek it, and it's not out in the public. But I was at an anime-related event today at someone else's house where someone brought a stack of magazines, catalogs, and manga from Japan, and left them on the kitchen table for everyone to see. I saw a few covers, and while no one was naked on them, I could tell the demure girl in a bikini eating an ice cream cone was probably not selling diary products. They sat in front of me at the table while I was doing work on my laptop, and from time to time, people asked "Whose are these?" I didn't know at first, and so no one touched them. Then the bringer, we'll call him "Garth," said, "Oh, I did... here, take a look at this... and this!" Now, in his defense, all he showed was some life-sized model of some anime available for $4500, and other stuff that wasn't even remotely porn. But as soon as he kept urging people to read from his collection, other people found the... other stuff.

"Look Punkie," said a person, showing me one of the bazillion of unidentifiable robot suits I see in anime, "it's a [type of model] of [name of character]." Uh, okay. Wish I could give you a spark of recognition, but... uh... it's a robot suit.

"Hey, wow, Punkie!" says someone else later. "It's [name of character]..." Then shows me some naked girl. Okay... look, I am not into Hentai, but whatever floats your boat. Like Ralph Bakshi said in his film "Cool World", "no
sex between noids and doodles."

"Punkie, look at this," says someone else. It's a plastic model of a girl. She's young, maybe 12. Missing the top half of her school uniform.

I am 8... and watching a preacher

"Uh, no. I don't want to see that," I say.

He said Jesus knew little children were wicked. What is he doing to my friend?

"Oh come on, it's just a model," and the person leaves my presence to show someone else.

She's screaming and crying it burns...

I am distracted. I can't think, and I have been having a mild wave of migraines for the last 24 hours. It's been a while without migraines, so this was expected. I was very tired. I am trying to get that image out of my head, and I feel afraid and cold. This sucks. My business is done at this gathering, anyway. But my wife has more to do. So I stay at the table. Luckily, someone comes and has a non-Hentai related discussion with me. Then they leave. Almost succeeded...

"Hey," says another person. "Wow, it's schoolgirl Neku-something, LOOK!" and it's thrust in my face. I avert my eyes, and all I glimpse is up some schoolgirl skirt with bulging panties and a cat tail. She is rapping with a jingle bell playfully. "I don't LIKE that sort of thing," I say, perhaps a bit too loud, because the stern tone in my voice was a bit out of control. Luckily, the party is loud, and no one else hears me.

She told. She told on him. And you know what? Her parents called her a liar. Forced her to apologize to the preacher. Goddamned1970s, where pedophilia doesn't exist if you don't want it to. Screwed her up for life while I watched. I lost her as a friend because she knew that I knew, and mommy and daddy said it wasn't real. But we all knew, all of us that saw. I carry that scar, and will for the rest of my life.

"Well, okay, okay, sor-RY!" says the person, taking the hint they touched a nerve. They aren't upset, the brush it off as a random encounter. I am seething. I want to go.

This is a dark corner of anime. Like how Christians must have felt about David Koresh, like how the Islamic faith feels about Bin Laden. Somewhere past the edge of Henati exists a small alley where innocence is the gateway to dominance for the insane. Some men can't stand women in positions of authority. Some circuit of that mommy/lover thing got crossed. They cannot feel secure in their sexual cravings because their fear of denial and rejection is so close to the nerve core that they have to assure that their recipient is totally unable to resist with physical reluctance, and more importantly, experience. Older women are incredibly intimidating to these people: they are mother, and mother is not sexy. Somewhere, deep in their past, something went wrong. And the children have to pay for it. The Japanese culture are more open about it, mostly because the rigid societal pressures tend to press it out of many desperate males who not only have to contend with the usual boyhood fears of rejection, but the strict social pathos. There are huge groups of companies profiting from this (link to snopes.com). It is called "bura-sera," and it scares me.

I carry that scar, and will for the rest of my life.

I guess I should just say, "Well, they don't see it the way you do." Maybe to them it's harmless and even "funny" in the same way Sanrio Japan sells Hello Kitty Vibrators. Part of me wants to believe that, but Lolita and its roricon ilk make me sick. Even stupid stuff like Digi Charat makes me nervous. Especially if I see some preteen at an anime con in that costume. Some part of me wants to stop her, and say, "Listen, you won't understand why you need to do this now, but please change into some normal street clothing. Most of the people here are good, but there are more than likely one or two... please, hurry!" I just can't stomach it, and maybe it's like other childhood traumas. Because the image of women have sex with octopi, while weird, certainly doesn't make me angry. Maybe I too strongly bond this kind of stuff with rape, which I also find furiously disgusting, and I should just calm the hell down.

But I carry that scar, and will for the rest of my life.

"Yeah," I tell my inner child, "we will. But what are you going to do? Buy a balloon and a can of soda, and it will go away? That never works... sometimes God gives us some challenges that warn us that there are bad people in this world. We must learn from what we don't understand... and let our fear of it not control us..."

I can feel it burn, too... she's not my friend anymore. I hope she's okay.

I hope so, too. Her pain must be ... far greater.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:32 AM EST [Link]


Thursday, January 23, 2003

But I Was Just Following Orders!

I think a lot of the Nazi officers who ran concentration camps under Hitler's regime claimed that they were "just following orders" during the War Tribunals. "It was procedure, I didn't make the rules." That didn't fly with a lot of the people who lost whole generations of families because of Hitler's insecurity with his pee-pee. And it doesn't fly with me, either.

Today, my son hit his head at school. Hard, but not damaging. So he went to the clinic. The nurse there is a skittish woman who looks like she's been yelled at all her life. I can see why. She has almost no spine or common sense. She calls the ambulance at least once a day. No fooling. Today was my son's day.

She called my wife at home, but Christine was on another line. So she called me, even though we left her Christine's cell phone. I was at work, in the middle of everything, so I spoke to my son, he seemed fine, and I let him go back to class. Then, in the middle of another meeting with someone I desperately had been trying to get ahold of all day before he went on vacation next week, the nurse called again, said my son was "sleepy," and since "the nurse's station was not a bedroom," I had to either come pick him up right away, or she'd send him to the hospital. I told her my wife was at home, but she insisted that my wife never answered her phones. I IM'd Christine, and she said that CR was fine, and that he didn't need to come home. Long story short, the nurse called the ambulance.

Why? Because it was "procedure." Neither one of us could whisk him away, and so she didn't want to deal with it. So while I am on the phone with my son, who says his head hurts, and online with Christine, the nurse called 911. Probably for the second time that day. Christine called and raised holy hell. The EMTs arrived, verified my son was just fine, and then the nurse didn't want to deal with it, and sent him home. Christine had to pick him up, but they wouldn't let her talk to the nurse because she was so angry. She made damn sure everyone knew how stupid this was.

Now, I asked this nurse (before she called 911), "Are you sure you want to do this? Call the ambulance? A vehicle meant for people who cannot move on their own because of illness or injury? Isn't this overreacting?" "It's just procedure, sir." Great. Now, I am sure EMTs don't see a whole lot of "nothing wrong" cases a day, except maybe for this school. I am sure they are glad to arrive to a scene, and find people okay after all. But because this nurse can't even tell the difference between a headache from banging one's head to a serious, mind-damaging concussion, and probably because she doesn't want to make the bed, she took the skills and time of a pair of EMTs. A pair who could have been out saving someone who was having a heart attack or lost a limb in a car accident. A real issue. Not some, "No, it's just a red mark, he's fine." But hey, "It's procedure." She "doesn't want to face litigation." Just following orders. To the letter.

I bet we can get rid of her by writing on a piece of official-looking paper, "You're fired." She'd never even question the signature.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:05 PM EST [Link]


Why I'll Never Run a Convention

From time to time, insane but well-meaning people say to me, "Hey Punkie, you should run a convention sometime. That would kick ass! You would be so good at it, you like fandom, and you have seen how everything runs for years. I bet you know how to run a convention inside and out by now!"

Why, yes. Yes I do. And that is precisely why you will never see me run one. I have seen it all, man ... okay, no, not all. There are still some things about how to deal with hotels I am not sure of, but for the most part, I have spent enough time with convention chairs, heads of departments, and fandom to see just how awful it can be to run one of these things. I would be a faboo consultant, but I know too much.

I think the first step in deciding to run a con is to know that there is a huge untapped market, and that you'd be willing to almost sell your soul to run one. Then you need to realize your social life will be seriously altered. You will have to take on a leadership role. You also have to realize that you will never have any "fun" at your con, or at least the kind of fun you have at other cons (like, no hobnobbing guests, you will be dealing with them as babysitters now). It is truly a "labor of love." It is work. Hard work. Ask yourself this:

* What do you do when the hotel decides to change the contract, but not inform you?
* Your best friend of 20 years, which you appointed to head of operations, goes weird (in a bad way) on you, and all the rest of the staff want him removed. Where do your priorities lie?
* Just before the convention, your mother gets seriously ill, and wants you to spend time with her instead of "your silly hobby." Now what?
* Halfway through the con, some idiot attendee with a fire extinguisher goes nuts, ruins a lot of hotel property in his quest for pranks, and while your security is chasing him, one of the staff gets seriously injured and has to be taken to the hospital. How does that make you feel?
* A convention you have loved for years, and in fact, inspired you to have your own convention, suddenly publicly declares your convention to be full of "perverts" and they start a political "either us or them" war that ends up losing you half your staff, and a fair portion of your attendees. How do you respond?
* The hotel managers change just before the convention, and the new manager doesn't like "your kind," and double-books you with a Mafia wedding and a small dog show, and can get away with it because of a loophole in the contract your legal team did not foresee. Now your convention space is reduced by half, the hotel is telling your guests they are "overbooked," and the hotel liaison is too meek to go up against the new manager. How do you fix this?
* You haven't slept for three days, and when you finally get to bed Friday night, you are only asleep for 30 minutes before the head of security wakes you up because of an incident with a room party that got out of control, then the head of programming (who also hasn't slept) is freaking out over a small matter that he could fix himself if he had any sense left in his brain, and the chief of operations is telling everyone to leave you alone so you can sleep. All at once. Then, because you are sleep deprived, you twist your ankle on the escalator, and the medical guy on call overreacts to this, and calls 911 which whisks you away. Now your con is running headless. When you finally get back, it's all in chaos. How do you get things running again, especially since you are on heavy painkillers?
* Thursday before the con, you catch the death flu. So does half your staff. You must run the con from the front of a toilet where at any moment, something might shoot out of either end. Most of your seriously ill staff simply cannot get out of bed to leave home. How do you run the con?
* Thursday before the con, your work calls, and due to a sudden problem, you MUST come in and work the weekend, even though you told them you had to have it off six months ago, and reminded them several times since then. How do you get it off anyway?
* The head of preregistration said she has a pre-reg count of 1200, about twice what you expected ... but she lost all the info in a computer crash, and doesn't have backups or any hard copies. How do you get the pre-regs back? How do you handle this in a hotel that can only really handle 900 people?
* Thursday before the con, it starts to snow. Long story short, your city in under a "state of emergency" by Friday. A con where you expected 2000, you get 40. Then the bill arrives. What foreign countries can you flee to that don't have extradition or reciprocity laws?

There are no "right or wrong" answers to many of these, but "where do your priorities lie?" kind of answers. These are tough to answer, and admittedly, most of these disasters won't happen to you. But these are all taken from real incidents at the multitude of conventions I have worked at.

Personally? I don't even want to answer these questions. I love fans and fandom, and I'd hate to throw a bad con and piss off 700 people. So I take a passive role as a consultant when asked. I have vicariously learned experience through the mistakes of others, and watch that expression on a con chair's face when he's been awake far too long, and seen far too much, and as asking, "Why am I doing this again?"

Posted by Punkie @ 09:58 AM EST [Link]


Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Basic Online Dishonesty

I am a member of a web community that recently held auctions where a percentage of the proceeds of the auctions were to go to keeping the board up and running. Out of the 150 auctions, only 4 people paid their fees. Only 4. This really sucks, because it reminds me back when... [wayback machine]

A BBS that shall remain nameless once held a benefit dinner to support a total upgrade and overhaul of the systems. It was running on an old 286, and they wanted to have it run on two new 386 systems, plus a CD-ROM, plus two new phone lines. It was an ambitious plan for 1992, but the benefit dinner already had 100 pledges at $35 a plate. So the dinner came and went. Total take-in was $420. It should have been $3500, but it was $420. According to the very angry sysop, "This barely covered our food bill, in fact, it lost us some money!" The BBS went belly up a few months later.

Another nameless BBS had a huge group dinner, where they collected the tab, and added it up. Later, the sysop found that another member, in a burst of generosity, had paid for everyone on his American Express card. So where did all the cash go? The guy who collected the money should have been told by the head waiter that the bill had already been taken care of. Well, it took only a few minutes to figure out where the money went. The guy who collected the money did give it back, apologized, made up some story, and everyone in the end agreed it should go as a donation. What they didn't know was he didn't pay for all of it back.

My friend Rogue has this saying, "People suck. Individuals may not, but as a whole, people suck." I try very hard not to believe that, but it seems Rogue, being only a scant few years older than I, has more wisdom.

Time and time again, I get shocked how some people are in online communities. I mean, I believe with all my heart that if I say, "I am going to pay you," I should pay them. My word should be my bond, it's how I raised myself. But apparently, I am in the vast minority.

This also marks the first time I think I may have been ripped off by an Ebay seller. I haven't made up my mind about this, because it's only been a month, but I think a product I purchased will not arrive for a variety of reasons. I am only out $20, so I am not so pissed off as I might be if it was $100. And I bet if the seller is dishonest, he or she bets on everyone doing that. Because it was a Dutch auction, and 30 x $20 is a $600 rake. Two weeks ago, I got a letter from another buyer who asked me if I heard anything, which is a bad sign. He said the people he spoke to also said they didn't get the item. And I did my research, he had a good rating, flawless, in fact. Over 600 buyers with no bad ratings at all. Perhaps he died. Maybe he managed to fake all those reviews. Who knows.

But it comes at a bad time. My trust in the human race is sometimes what keeps me going. I believe deep in my heart that basically everyone is a good person, and I want to keep believing that. My father always said, "Everyone is out to get you. I am the only one who cares about you, and I don't even like you." And look how he turned out: rich.

Okay, that is supposed to be funny. But sadly, it's true, which sucks the air out of the funny balloon. He got rich, I suppose, by jealously hoarding his money. He never gave me any of it, even took mine from time to time, and refused to spend money on the normal mundane things like appliance repair and medical bills. I also have this vague idea, based on people who used to work with him, that he got rich by being a soulless backstabber who focused on the bottom line instead of caring who he hurt in the process. That's why defense contractors liked him so much, he made them rich. Of course, he also made a lot of enemies, and while I was growing up, he never had any friends, and hopped from company to company every few years before it all caught up with him. He hated bureaucrats, lobbyists, and any professional, really. Because they got in the way of his money. He REALLY hated my psychologists, which was fine with me, because he was the last one to not know he was crazy.

So I don't want to end up like that. Sure, he may have some house on the beach with his yacht in San Diego somewhere, but... he can't take that with him. And the older he gets, the less he's leaving behind but a legacy of anecdotes about some asshole someone once knew... what's his face? And when he's gone, his assets melt away into monetary obscurity on some deed in a file cabinet in a locked office.

Not me man, I want to get rich because I want to make the money work back for the people. Sure, as my father said, there are a lot of dumb people who don't deserve to have their problems fixed. There are all kinds of dishonest people who will take my donations, and use it for themselves. But I can't live for the dishonest people. I have to live and give to the honest ones, and that's what I keep in my heart.

So screw you, dishonest online people!

Posted by Punkie @ 04:22 PM EST [Link]


Neutralizing My Office

When I first started in the tech world, I worked at a desk that was shared with someone else. I got to stare at all his knickknacks and photos while I answered the phone. I wanted my stuff up around the desk, but never got the nerve. Then I got promoted to my own desk, and put up some toys like other people had. Then someone stole a few of them, which made me mad, so I didn't put up anything that couldn't get stolen. Then we kept having layoffs, about once every four to six months (and this was during the dotcom boom!), and the creed was, "Don't put up more than you can carry away in one box." I stuck to that until I left that job.

[ Many jobs later...]

My office is full of weird crap. When I started working at this place, I didn't even have an office or even a pod. I sat at a huge desk with 4 monitors and two phones that I shared with the rest of the staff. The only person who had an office was my boss. Then I got promoted, and I got to share an office with a longtime friend, and buddy, I decorated. At one time, I had Christmas lights everywhere. I had LEGOs, fun lamps, you name it. But I mostly had the office to myself, because my buddy had to work in the lab all the time. Then they split ups into two different departments, and they never got an office mate for me, so I had a huge, two-man office all to myself. The dotcom bubble had now burst, and then we had the 9/11 thing, and now every six months or so, more layoffs. Then they moved me to a smaller single-person office. I am happy here.

Then they had a buyout, then a HUGE swath of layoffs, and people in the offices left and right around me got laid off, including my good buddy. Then the buyout went sour ... well, I still have a job here, but everything has changed. The fun drained away from the workplace like a slashed corpse loses bodily fluids. I remembered my "one box rule" for several jobs back, and so I have gone about the beginning of the removal of a lot of stuff from my office.

Now half my toys are gone. I have tossed out a lot of manuals I no longer need anymore, and some that might be valuable I have left on the office's unofficial "freebie" table to be scavenged by fellow coworkers. I have reduced my mug collection to just one main travel mug I drink coffee from every other morning (depending on need). I gave away a lot of spare hardware I had collected from system we were just throwing away, like floppy drives, ISA NICs, and other weird peripherals. Also some software, like tons of CDs with StarOffice 5.2 on them. I have kept a lot of keyboards and mice, plus some old hubs, tons of power cords and LAN cables, and some stuff I may need later. I wish I could take some of it home, but it's not mine to take; I didn't pay for it. Besides, I have enough of those at home as it is.

I still have some favorites, like my Buddy Christ, my Goth nodders, an Opree Sea Fish, and my Futurama tin sign that sarcastically reminds me I am not paid to think. Plus a few small things, and two novelty lamps. The lamps are probably the next to go home, and soon, I will have reduced the office to one box of stuff to prepare for that inevitable day when I get the statement of doom: "Grig, can I see you in my office for a moment?"

It's a sad, but inevitable fading of the soul that was once the dotcom era.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:46 AM EST [Link]


Tuesday, January 21, 2003

What I Do All Day

This is a normal work day for me. My job is (roughly) a programmer and analyst that also does programming strategies, hardware repair and upgrades, and long-term predictions and trends. My team does network performance metrics for various vendors, usually testing phone numbers, but we also test broadband, satellite, and LANs. My company is well known, but I don't talk about it on my site because of proprietary information and security issues.

7:00 - Get to work, start up my computers, get coffee, wake up, read e-mail. There will be notes from our night programmer, like "I set up machines 235 and 254 to dial the new Central Time Zone numbers, and I fixed 198, it had a bad modem in it." Often, a lot of people working on a project with me don't read their e-mail during the day, but once in the morning, and once before they leave, so if I left before 17:00, I am answering mail from them as well. Oh, and delete spam. This company has more spam for a corporate office than I have ever seen. Hackers get our company phone list all the time, apparently.
8:00 - Check on one of 250 systems to make sure they all reported in last night's data. During this time, I smack around a few systems that went down and stayed down. I built software that monitors and reboots machines that get hung or go down, but sometimes the machine is beyond hope, or someone turned it off, the power plug got removed, and so on. Sometimes I fix these machines, which are built in racks that tend to overheat. This is also the time my boss' boss calls me with some wacky new idea he had (I bet he sits bolt upright in bed with these ideas at 3am). Since I am the only person awake this early besides him, we have a lot of chats, and while his ideas are good, sadly most of them don't get implemented because of the lack of manpower on our team.
9:00 - Start my report on what happened in the last 24 hours with our systems. What went down, what data looks "funny," and some speculation on what the data will look like tomorrow. I also update the progress on all my projects I am working on.
10:00 - If the report didn't have a lot of extra problems (like a systemwide failure or something), I send out my report and start work on one of my various many projects including software research, programming, telecom trends, and so on.
11:30 - Lunch. Usually interrupted. I take lunch this early because the local cafeteria opens at this time, and when it opens, it's usually pretty empty. By noon, it's crowded, and I have to stand in line for everything. This goes on until 1:30 or so, and by then, all the good stuff is gone. I take lunch back to my office, and sometimes get interrupted by someone who has some status on a project I am working on (it's worse if I sit in the cafeteria, which doesn't have nearly enough seating for everyone here anyway). My lunch gets cold a lot. If it's not interrupted, I take an hour to cool off my brain and eat in peace. I browse the web a little.
12:30 - If lunch was not interrupted, I do some more project work.
15:00 - Go home. Well, I am supposed to go home, but often I work until 17:00 or later. Usually this is because of a meeting, and then work I have to do right after the meeting. Sometimes I have to stay late to talk to the night people. Sometimes I am just "in the zone" of some programming, and to interrupt it would take more time to "recapture the moment" rather than keep going. Sometimes, and emergency project comes up, or I have to monitor something during our "live hours" which are 15:00 - 01:00 the next morning.

Now, a lot of this schedule can get interrupted or totally thrown out of whack if I have to attend some meeting (which run, on average, about 2 hours each), get an emergency project ("Canada's system is down, man!"), have to do someone else's job because they are out (sick, vacation, emergency, flaky, whatever), go on field trips (usually to other testing labs), or just get hijacked by another team ("This is Grig, he will show you something ... show them, Grig!" [cue circus calliope music]). I am a pretty valuable commodity to my company, as they keep telling me, so I often am used in demonstrations and tours.

I can't say I work *solid* through all this, although I usually do. Sometimes I browse the web, update my journal, and so on because a lot of my work is "run a process and wait," kind of stuff. Often it's "run, wait, fix, run again, wait, fix again, run again, wait..." and so on. Then there are the "time-stealers," the people who drop by my office and yak and yak and yak about golf, fishing, their divorce, latest illness, and so on. I can ignore an IM, but it's hard to ignore a person in your office. Sometimes, someone from a project comes by, then another, and soon my office has 3-4 people spilling out of it (it's a small office), usually having two separate conversations. I never get work done that way.

All in all, I pull about a 42-52 hour week on average, usually in an 8-10-10-10-8 cycle. I try and leave early on Friday, but that doesn't work a lot of the time. Sometimes if I stay an extra hour, it will save me two hours later. Or four. But then when I get home, I am all tired and junk. Part of me knows this is bad, but then there's that "you better be glad you even HAVE a job in today's economy!" Most of my tech friends are either unemployed, or doing the same stuff I am, hour-wise.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:07 AM EST [Link]


Monday, January 20, 2003

Computer fixed, lots of parties, and housework

COMPUTER BACK UP, YAY!
Well, my logical deduction and theory was right, it was the power supply. I had to shell out $100 for a new Antec, but it was worth it to see... well, Windows XP boot again. I am now doing a backup I wished I had done when I worried whether or not the system would ever work again.

PARTIES
We're having a lot of parties at our house this year. So far. I didn't plan them, they sort of happened. And while they are fun, nothing else is getting done at home. I feel bad thinking, "Maybe not so many parties," because there was a time when our house was so small, we couldn't have a party. Also, I seem to have a lot of friends who never have parties, and are grateful to have them. It started with a post-Evecon party for our out-of-town friends that lasted until morning. The next weekend it was another drinking party that while I went to bed at 11:30pm, the party lasted until 7:30am, and was considered by all to be a very good time. Another drinking party has been scheduled for late February. Then this weekend, Katsucon had its Anime Music Video Judging, and while we did have more good entries than last year, this year was still mostly bad ones.

HOUSEWORK
I do about 95-99% of the housework. This includes washing, sweeping, vacuuming, laundry, dishes, pest control, home repair, lawn and garden, fireplace, and general straightening up after two adults, a preteen, two dogs and four cats. The mess in our house is a constant flow like a glacier, where piles upon piles of stuff accumulate in slippery masses that slide apart and fall to the floor. Flat space is prime real estate in our house. Tabletops, chair seats, countertops, the tops of boxes, and eventually the floor are piled with stuff. Most of it can be put away or thrown out, but time is elusive in a two-income home, and so like snowfall in the Rockies, soon the places in our house become buried.

It's frustrating. My housework skills are not the best, I'd give them a C+ or a B- at best. I first learned housework from my mother, which was valuable, because when she was drunk, I had to do it. A lot of what I learned was still self-taught, though, and not very efficient. Then I lived at the FanTek house, where Bruce showed me how to clean efficiently, which helped immensely. But back then, we had roommates who also did their share of work. So while the house was cluttered with the weird stuff FanTek accumulates, it was at least cleaned a lot.

I once read an apron that said "Real Moms often have sticky floors, filthy ovens, and happy kids." This gives me a small smile, but it also makes me sigh how segregated our society is. It assumes that the female does all the cleaning. So when most people come to the house, and see the mess, they think it's my fault, and my wife has to deal with the mess I must have left. "Ha ha," they say, "your husband is like mine, always a slob who drools on the nice doilies." Christine smiles and says, "Actually, my husband does all the work, I don't." They wink at her, because they know I am in earshot, "Oh, *sure* he does! I bet he does a GREAT job..." like in reality, I walk around in my undies and drink beer while watching football, but my wife is amusing me. I feel bad, because I am always behind on everything. And as much as I run around at work, and run around at home, I get so tired, and then it gets MORE behind. It's pretty stressful.

I am at least glad Christine and CR don't order me around, and Christine is always appreciative, but I still feel like a maid who is always on the edge of getting fired for lousy work.

Final Note...
I finally got time and my hair cut. So did the whole family, and CR ended up with a buzz cut he didn't like, but I consoled him it would grow out. He now looks like Sluggo. He didn't stop the barber because he was afraid of offending her, and while we told him that it was nice to be considerate of other's feelings, he shouldn't just say nothing, because she won't learn unless you make a polite request to stop.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:44 PM EST [Link]


Sunday, January 19, 2003

Computer Down! We have a computer down!

I am bummed. Majorly bummed.

My computer stopped working. Just right out of the blue, sometime between Friday and Saturday, while it was running quietly, it just up and died. I think my power supply blew, and that should be easy to fix. But I am bummed that I have to spend $75 on a new power supply (if that's why it isn't starting). This is why I'll never buy from AIB Computers ever again. They totally suck.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:47 PM EST [Link]


Parallel Universe - What If I Had Succeeded at Suicide?

Comedienne Rita Rutner has a bit where she was depressed, and wanted to take her own life, and an angel tried to stop her by showing her what the world would be if she had never been born. It turned out the world would have been much better, and the angel was forced to apologize. I get a chuckle out of that, but it gets me thinking about my youth, and why I am glad I never committed suicide.

Last suicide attempt was at age 14, about 20 years ago. I still suffer from depression, and while I haven't entertained suicidal threats in ages, when I get into that black corner of my mood, there's always that self-checking mechanism, "You don't want to end your life, do you?" No, thank you. Too much to do, too many people would be hurt, and now it seem so over dramatic.

I was what a lot of adults called at the time "high risk" suicidal. I had barely any friends, and certainly no friends I could confide deeply in. Okay, that's not true, I *could* have confided deeply in one of my friends, but he was living in Texas and I was afraid... see, this is why I was high risk: I never told ANYONE I was suicidal. Never. Why? Because I had a realistic sense that someone might try to stop me. And I truly wanted to die. Or at least, I wanted that option open. And I took advantage of that option several times. Looking back on it, I think it was my only sense of control.

A few years ago, I visited that place in my memory. My friend Neal in Texas and I sent tape letters back and forth, and while none of the tapes had "I hate my life, boo hoo" in them, I could tell by connected memories what was going on in my house at that time. I used my skills from years of watching too many SciFi plots to construct an alternate universe, based on how my parents reacted at the time, applied psychological knowledge and experience of others in positions similar to theirs, and how my father reacted after my mother's suicide. It would have gone something like this:

Age 13. Depressed over-reacting some school-related failure, I took my own life. First, depending on when I actually did it, it might take a while for anyone to notice. If my mother was sober, I'd say within 24 hours. If she was drunk, it might be several days, possibly as long as a week before my father would probably have noticed the smell (his business trips were never longer than a week). The school would most likely be the first to notice, but would have called during the day. If mother was passed out, she wouldn't have answered, and we didn't have a machine back then. But let's give them a head start, and say they discovered within 2 days.

Of course, my mother would have been upset as all hell. She would have mourned for me the loudest. My father would be disgusted, but I think a little relieved that I was gone. He would console my mother, and my mother would have had it together enough to do a funeral. I think most of the neighborhood, and possible some of the people at school, would have attended. News of my death would first reach the nosy people in our neighborhood. Depending on luck and the skills honed by years of prying gossip, the Women's Club of Southridge would have either found out or guessed, and soon the neighborhood would know. My parents CERTAINLY would have never told them, and since my suicides usually were self-poisoning attempts, they would have called it an "accidental overdose" or something. "Little Gregory thought those pills were candy, he didn't know..." I could see my mother saying to herself in desperate conviction, no matter what the coroner's report said. There would be a lot of people at the funeral, because my mother was well-liked, and a lot of people felt sorry for her, too. They felt sorry such a nice person was married to someone like my dad, and they felt sorry that she was the mother of "That Larson Boy," who had been described as "Awkward: a little odd, and kind of sad. A product of his environment, no doubt." Most still feel that same way, I can see it if I visit them. Like, "I hope I don't catch his weirdness in my house..."

The whole circus would be over in a week. I doubt any of the kids would have been told, but the news would spread that "That Larson Kid" had died via parents who found out. Although many would have guessed, based on gossip, that I took my own life, or maybe just was on drugs anyway ("that strange Larson kid") and overdosed while listening to Lynard Skynard (for the record, I never listed to Lynard Skynard, but that was the dramatic suicide background music of choice back then before MTV and the great 80s ballads, so I am sure that's how others of my age group would have pictured it). Depending on reaction, maybe the school would have had counseling available, but I know they would have really tried to hush the whole thing up, and since I didn't have friends at that time, I wouldn't have been missed. My mother would be okay for a short while, then give into heavy drinking again. My father would attempt to erase all memory of me, taking down my pictures and so on, in attempt to ease my mother's depression (as cruel as he was, I think he did love her), and also so he wouldn't have to think about me. My friend Neal would have eventually called from Texas, worried that he hadn't gotten letters from me in months, and wondered if he made me mad or something. Then he would have been told that "Gregory died a few months ago... I thought someone would have told you by now." Neal probably would have been the second most upset after my mother. After about a year, he'd get angry at the thought he once had a kid, probably trying to erase the whole thing as a "bad mistake," which, of course, he was not capable of.

After so many years, my mother probably would have taken her own life, too, following the same track as now. My father probably would have been left almost unaltered by the experience than he is today. Memories of me would have been reduced to an anecdote in Neal's life about how he made friends with this kid who died, and he's not sure how, but maybe his father killed him or something. of course, the ripples that went through time would have magnified:

I would have never met Christine. She would have a totally different life, and while I don't want to sound boastful, probably not nearly as good of one. My son would have never been born. All those friends I talked out of suicide and bad acid trips might have died. I know my friends Jamie and Kathy would never have met and gotten married. No one would have taken care of my grandmother's last wishes. All that comedy that I wrote that people liked would have never made anyone feel happy. Untold changes in the lives of people I care about. Pets I took in might have been gassed at the pound, died early as strays, or never known the peace of sleeping by a humans' head, knowing you're safe. My fair readers, you wouldn't be reading this blog.

I am glad I never committed suicide. And to people out there who are reading this, if a schmuck like me can finally make it good, you can, too.

Last Thoughts
Look, the brutal and honest truth is that suicide is over dramatic and selfish. I never knew really what that meant until I had to clean up after one. It's selfish because you killed somebody, you never had to face the aftermath, and someone else gets to suffer because you couldn't get help. Suicide as the "ultimate form of self-criticism" assumes that others care about what you are critiquing. And if they care, then don't kill yourself. I don't care how false and shallow the world is, no one is going to change because you died, and then it was all for nothing. I have seen many suicide aftermaths, and all that ends up happening is people get upset, then they feel better, and then go on without you, probably doing the same things they always have. In fact, your death will probably be nothing more than a comedy of the media, and a mockery of whatever to were trying to convey via your morbid choice of artistic medium. Then all you end up being is an anecdote, and then forgotten (ever hear about many famous suicides? Neither have I...).

I mean, if you really want to die, and die because you really can't stand living (look, the afterlife isn't any better after a suicide, in fact, it's worse), then do us all a favor and die either doing something dangerous but useful (being a fireman, fighting crime, something like that), or at the very least make it look like an accident. Suicide is a form of murder, and it ooks people out if they think you ended that way, and if that's what you intended, then you deserve what is facing you as you approach that white tunnel and realize: "Uh oh... Oh, MAN, what a dumbass I was!" Total separation from worldly burdens have a way of exposing the universal truth behind everything, and the last human though through your head was how you wished you knew then what you know... what? Mommy? God?

Posted by Punkie @ 09:36 AM EST [Link]


Thursday, January 16, 2003

Is Punkie Smart? No, but I am learning to be...

This is a difficult topic for me, because I hated being known as "smart" by others for many years, because I constantly feel limited by my own skills to solve problems and figure out my fellow humans. Plus, I was labeled as a "genius" (I used to *loathe* that word) at an early age, so for the rest of my academic life, it was always the same counter-label, "Doesn't live up to expectations." That would be like someone calling you psychic, and then getting mad when your predictions came out wrong, and even go so far as to accuse you for not even trying! Uh... *you* said I was the genius, not me.

But...

Is ignorance bliss? Many smart people think so, but I think they confuse "hyper aware and worrisome" with intelligence. You can know what's going on, and not care, and be happy. I think happiness is all about known what to take seriously, and what not to. You know, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." That's where that phrase comes from. I think "smart" people are frustrated that they can't be all logical all the time, in a world where they themselves, as well as everyone and everything else around them, are emotional, irrational, and sometimes random. That's why Spock was so popular with sci-fi geeks.

For me, I divide "smart" into two skills: intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence is book smarts; how much you know. Wisdom is street sense; how you use what you know. You gain intelligence by study, wisdom by experience. I know many intelligent people who are total idiots in the real world. I know some wise people who don't know how to use a computer. This division also helps separate the "smart" category into "smart as what?"

For instance, I know many computer science grads who got all high marks in school, but when they enter the workforce, they totally flub up, even if they studied the very thing they flubbed up. It's not that they don't know it, they just never actually worked with it in a real world experience. As the saying goes, "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." Good teachers know this, and often have great lessons that incorporate mistakes. I had a chemistry teacher who taught us a valuable lesson by giving us faulty products and false goals. He said, "You add four drops of this, and the liquid should turn blue." Well, it didn't, and those who accurately reported what they saw, and recorded the data truthfully got an A in that lab. Those who didn't got a C, and warned next time it would be an F. He proved to us, the next day, that the scientific world is full of mistakes like that, where someone "made the hypothesis fit the data" rather than disprove the original hypothesis (using your data, even if it contradicts your hypothesis, is called "critical thinking"). Many scientists make this mistake a lot because they are afraid they'll lose their funding, like say, a pharmecutical company wants to know if a drung they made makes people sick... they don't want to hear "yes." I see this all the time in the tech world. Backtracking lies and so on.

But, to answer the topic question, I do have some "smarts" in certain topics, and none in others. Generally, people have labeled me as "smart," but I don't. I think I am on the high end of average, and always find smarter people (like most my friends) to surround myself with, so I become smarter.

So when people ask if I am smart, I say, "No, but I am learning to be..." and I will *always* say that.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:21 AM EST [Link]


Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Uncle Punkie's Famous Files

I was going to title this, "Why I am so Effeminate: I Went to High School With a Lesbian and an Interior Decorator," but that's not really true. I mean, why I am effeminate. That's a topic for another post. But what is true is that my high school alumni tree is starting to sprout some... odd branches. Now there is nothing wrong with being a lesbian or an interior decorator, even if you're not gay like the unfair stereotype (I happen to like pastels). So I titled this for what it is: shameless name-dropping. I feel so ashamed for posting this, but I wanted to show what a small world we live in, and for a little "I touched someone famous" stupidity. We all have our "brush with greatness," so here's a few of mine. Okay, see that nerd on the left? That's me, in 1986, as shot by our school photographer. Oh... well I am still nerdy at 34, so not much has changed (except I got fat again).

I graduated high school in 1987. I grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood with the children of senators, famous lobbyists, lawyers, generals, and a few celebrities and wealthy business owners. I always knew some of these people who be in the spotlight someday. Just... well, we're all still in our early 30s, so who knows what lies in the future? But for now... here's what we got, and as a child of the 80s, I wouldn't have ever guessed this.

Okay, if you lived in the 1970s in the DC area, you knew "Jhoon Rhee's Self Defense" jingles by heart. Jhoon Rhee was a Korean immigrant who made Karate and Judo big in our area. "Noboddy boddahs meeeee... no boddy boddahs me... call USA-1000... Jhoon Rhee means might for right!" Then the two wee little kids who go, "No boddy boddahs me." and "No boddy boddahs me, eedah! [wink]" I went to school with those kids. The girl was MeMe Rhee, Jhoon's daughter. If I told you that she was hella-talented, I doubt you'd disagree. She was. She knew all the martial arts, Jazz dance, modern dance... always in the talent shows. Well dressed, too. Here she is on the right, straight from my 1986 yearbook, with her date, both voted as "Best dressed." Does her date look familiar? If you can't read the caption on the left, it says, "Consulting magazines such as Vogue and GQ give MeMe Rhee and Vernon Yip their flair for dressing. This made them the obvious choices for the Best Dressed award." Vernon Yip... hmmm... that face. Those of you who watch the hit TLC show "Trading Spaces," know him as Vern. He's probably more famous than MeMe right now. Here's his yearbook photo below.

Of course, there's more to this story. Back to the Jhoon Rhee ads, the boy who said "No boddy boddahs me," was named Michael Choe (friend of the Rhee family). This story would have ended right here, but look who he's pictured next to. You may not recognize her right away, because the last photo I saw of her was with long hair. But she was very short-haired and butch in high school. She went on to defend the rights of homosexual people in the labor force, and was very famous in the GLIB community for that. But there's more. Her father's the current Vice President of the United States. Yep, that's Mary Cheney you see next to Michael, the very "lesbian daughter" the press got ahold of. But Mary's nothing to be ashamed of, she did really well for the rights of gays an lesbians in the workplace. It's just not... er, a Republican platform. I also went to school with Senator Dingell's daughter (from the hotly debated Tauzin-Dingell communications act), the grand-daughter of Burl Ives... but perhaps I have said too much.

I wish all these people well. It's not the path we would have predicted, but certainly they have gone onto greatness in their own unique way. They all did better than I have, and I am not doing too badly, so that's pretty good.

Small world, though, right?

Posted by Punkie @ 06:37 PM EST [Link]


Tales from techno-geeks in an in-duh-vidual post dotcom world

As stupid as my work can be sometimes, and a scant few people who work in it, for the most part my company and the people I work with are okay, despite the mergers and buyouts. I feel lucky about this, because I keep getting stories from other people about how bad their technical offices are or were.

Today I got this gem. A friend of mine who works in Portland told me that their new management is on some sort of security streak. As part of their efforts to prevent unauthorized tampering, they have asked that no one keep stuff posted in their cubicle that gives any technical stuff away. Sounds sensible, right? You don't want proprietary stuff on your cubicle wall, like passwords and IP addresses of sensitive servers. But these goons had no idea what was secure or not, and they tore down a huge poster on the office wall that showed the entire OSI structure of the most common networks. Now, for those not technically inclined, that would be the same as Ford motors not allowing pictures of cars on office walls, in case a competitor found out they use 4 wheels. They also forced an employee to take down a Map of the Internet because "it might give hackers the edge." Note, I linked something available to anyone with a browser. The Internet Map is no secret, or else it wouldn't work.

Another friend, years ago, worked for an office that was downsizing, and decided to merge hard-core UNIX-geek developers with the Internal Help Desk, since "they sat in front of the computer all day, anyway, why not let them get exercise and meet other employees?" Right. They also fired their testing department because they were "down on the product" and "not team players." Okay, they are supposed to find bugs, they are your TESTING department!

Posted by Punkie @ 02:09 PM EST [Link]


Harry Potter Junkie

"The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. ...The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four."
-- J.K. Rowling, intro to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, due June 21st, 2003

A few years ago, the SF&F community was abuzz with this "Harry Potter" series. I think Book 2 was out by that point. "You have to read this, Punkie!" they said. This went on for years. When Book 4 was being introduced, and I already saw Book 3 had created a frenzy in the book stores. "Mundanes like this stuff?" I asked. So I went on Half.com, and got me Book 1. Holy cow, what a book. In three months our family owned the next three books, and despite my wailing I didn't have time to read books, I *made* time for these. Then the well went dry.

"Jesus Uncle Punkie," some of you might be saying, "It's a farkin' kid's book! What's next, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish?." Ha ha. Idiots. The lot of you. Though Suess has a bizarre sense of poetry that obviously inspired greats like Danny Elfman and Tim Burton, J.K. Rowling has inspired me. Deeply. Not just what she wrote about, but how she writes. It's clear, concise, gripping, and everything that makes for good modern writing. Some parents call it "pap" and "pop lit." Sorry, today's "Pop lit" is tomorrow's "Classic." Ask Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oh, wait, he's dead. Well, anyway, we need more writers like Ms. Rowling. There are a lot of good "children's" book writers from the past, like George Selden, Judy Blume, and Norman Jester that are easily readable by adults. Madeline L'Engle's "Wrinkle in Time," a complex sci-fi book about dimensional time and space travel, was marketed for young readers. We read it. We liked it.

At 768 pages, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is more than one-third longer than its predecessor, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Britain's Bloomsbury Publishers said. Wow. I remember when a "big book" was only 360 pages. I am a fast reader, and the last book, "Goblet of Fire" took me a scant week to read. Nothing else got done in my life. It was that good. Then I just saw this quote:

"Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses. 'It is time,' he said, 'for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.'

Whhhhooooaaaa.... I am trembling. Dear God, that quote alone will drive us all into a frenzy. I wonder if they will have enough. It will probably be another Cabbage Patch or Tickle-Me-Elmo thing. As soon as Amazon.com has it for pre-order, I am so gettin' it.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:09 PM EST [Link]


Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Hair - Not just a mood musical from the 60s

"Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter. He had been
looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was
his first speech.

"You should learn not to make personal remarks," Alice said
with some severity; "it's very rude."

-- Lewis Carroll from his work, "Alice in Wonderland"

My hair wants cutting. I look like Ben Franklin right now, except my hair is dirty blond instead of Ben's dashing pepper gray. Getting my hair cut is a very tedious process. First, I have to find the time, of which there barely is any nowadays (I am typing this on my lunch break, which was interrupted twice by my boss). Then, I have to get a way to get there, which is hard, because I don't drive, and no haircut place is within walking distance to me. So I have to get a ride, and that now eats into my wife's time schedule. So I have to balance two schedules, both with very narrow windows. So now my hair is annoyingly long.

When I was growing up, my mother cut my hair. She wasn't too bad at it, but I had to avoid her when she was drunk because she once cut deeply into my ear. But when sober, the cuts sufficed. She also cut my father's hair, and we both had the same "boring with bangs" look, but since both of us didn't care what our hair looked like as long as it was neat and straight, no worries. When I was about 16, I got my first hair cut at some other place, a local chain called "The Hair Cuttery." By this time in my life, my mother was way too blasted most of the time to do a lot of her previous duties, and she knew it. She thought I was "so brave," and that was a weird comment to get at 16 in the barber's chair.

Twice, I tried to grow my hair long. The first time, I was growing a rat tail (nowadays called a "padawan braid" by Star Wars fans). It grew quite long from age 17 until I was 19, when it got cut off accidentally by a stylist who didn't speak English. The second time I grew it out when I was unemployed, but long hair was so annoying to keep, and required so much shampoo and work.. forget it. I'd wear a buzz cut now if it weren't for the fact I have a lumpy head (I have harmless bone lesions on my skull, making my head look like a deformed turtle shell, but you can't tell unless I was bald or you have to comb through it). Either way, I will never have long hair again. But my hair can't bee too short, either, because it is thick, and will stick straight out if cut too short. I had a stylist do this to me once, and I had a "poof" of hair on the top of my head for weeks until it grew long enough to stay flat.

My hair is thick and dense, but receding near the front nowadays in typical male pattern baldness. You can't really tell yet by casual glance, but I can already see the signs of a widow's peak forming. I estimate I'll have a horseshoe of hair by my 50s. This does not bother me so much, because about ten years ago, I said to myself I would not be one of those guys who goes ass-wild when he thinks he's losing his hair or something. It happens to most of us, get over it. I see those "Hair Club for Men" ads all the time, and how stupid they are. They show "before and after" photos where "before" looks like a redneck mug shot at the police station, and "after" has all kinds of mood lighting, a decent shirt, and the face is made thinner. Like "get new hair, and you'll get thinner, better lighting, and have good dress sense." I could see getting hair replacement if your head was totally bald at age 24, or you had some sort of head injury and are trying to cover a scar revealed by your loss of hair there. But for most people? Ha! I want to say, "Your hair loss is not even the main issue here, it's just an accent on an already internally flawed piece."

Posted by Punkie @ 01:12 PM EST [Link]


Monday, January 13, 2003

The Coffee Generation - "Hold on tight... to your dreams..."

When I was a late teen, some "Coffee Institute" or "American Coffee Drinker Union" or some such group had a series of ads promoting coffee. They usually had slightly-outdated "sold-out Gold" songs by David Bowie or E.L.O., showing people all hyper and doing physical activities... promoting coffee. Not a specific brand, or even some grower, but just coffee in general. Probably someone who had a lot invested in coffee futures.

When I was 6, I made a promise to my older self that I would never smoke, drink alcohol, do drugs, or drink coffee. This came about as my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Charlwood, told me her teeth were yellow from drinking too much coffee. Well, I kept the first three promises.

My first taste of the bitter beans came when I was working sci-fi conventions. I drank coffee the same way I drank cough syrup; it tasted nasty and horrific, but it did the job when I needed it to. This was about age 18 or so, and for the next half a dozen years, I drank about six cups of coffee a year. Usually to stay awake at a con. Well, that all changed in the winter of 1994.

Blame it on Scandinavian Air Service, or SAS. I remember it well, it was December the 13th, the day of St. Lucia to us Swedes. St. Lucia is a celebration of the "Lady of Light," and happenstance put me on a flight to see my dying grandmother on that night in 1994 (she got better, and lived for another 5 years). I had never been out of the country since I was maybe 2, and I was traveling alone. I don't do well in airplanes, not because of the fear, no, because I am large and the seats are so damn uncomfortable. I can be on a plane for about 2 hours before I am sick of it. After 5 hours, I want off. Trips from the US to Stockholm are at least 8 hours, possibly as long as 9-12, depending on weather. I was not a happy camper. Only the distraction of "what the heck will I do in Stockholm? I barely speak Swedish? What if they are all like Martians or something?" kept me from going nuts in that seat. I got to Stockholm, no Martians, and got on a commuter flight which took me to Kallix in Luleå. On that flight, I was offered coffee.

I was pretty stressed out and tired, and felt I needed a cup of Jo. The stewardess was going through the isles, "Kaffe eller te? Kaffe eller te?" Ah, I knew that one. "Kaffe, tak," I said. "Skulle vilja ha ni socker eller gradde med din kaffe?" she answered. I felt like Steve Martin in France, "'Ha ha,' I said! 'What is that you are saying??'" Luckily, she immediately said, in a PERFECT British accent, "I asked if you'd like sugar or cream with your coffee?" "Both, please." I said. I mixed my sugar and cream (which came in an odd pyramid shape) in the brown liquid. I put the concoction to my lips, fully expecting the harsh bitter water burn my lips, and assault my tongue with hot pain... and found something totally different in my mouth.

"Fan, det här kafe är fantastik!" I would have said, had I known Swedish better. I was stunned. It was like some flash in time where you remember where you were, the ambiance, the smells, the sounds. I was in a large commuter plane, with a fat man in a tweed coat next to me, smelling sweet coffee, and the roar of twin overhead props droning out everything with its aggressively dampening white noise.

I had a lot of coffee in Sweden. Probably too much. But it was so good! I heard, while I was there, when my grandmother moved back to Sweden in 1991, she made coffee for her great niece Carin, and Carin said, "Edit! How can you make such bad coffee?" "That was the way John liked it," she replied, referring to her late husband. "No wonder he used so much sugar," she added.

Americans make bad, weak, and bitter coffee. Now, since that winter of 1994, Starbucks has taken hold on the East coast, and a lot of coffee shops became popular. Why? Because we had terrible, weak, Columbia roasts to drink, and once we had a choice, boy! What a difference. Coffee is more than just something to drink with ham and eggs, it's something you can drink by itself! I always laugh at the people who go, "How can you pay $4.99 for a vente frozen Mocha Frappachio when McDonalds costs only 99 cents?" and think they are the most clever and enlightened person in the world for asking. Same reason I'd rather go for a filet mignon rather than "Salisbury steak," dude. It tastes a LOT better, and if I can afford it, it's my choice! Plus, I drink these maybe once a month, and free office coffee about twice a week, so price is a lot lower than you pay for bitter bean water served by the clown at 7-11 every morning.

Me? I like Gevalia Dark Stockholm Roast the best, but have also enjoyed some other blends at Starbucks, Gloria Jean, and even, of all places Duncan Donuts, which has pretty good coffee as well.

Of course, when I was doing the shift from hell a few years ago (1998-99, midnight-noon, Wed-Sat), I drank coffee and Mountain Dew like nothing else. It drove my blood pressure through the roof, played with my head, and almost ate a hole in my belly. Now I drink those recreationally, because caffeine really doesn't do it for me anymore. Orange Juice does.

The first time I tried Orange Juice, I was... okay... another story, another time. :)

Posted by Punkie @ 12:41 AM EST [Link]


Saturday, January 11, 2003

Computers are like people

When I was a wee programmer, in a "Computers for Kids" course I took in 4th Grade summer "enrichment" school, one of the first things they taught us was that "Computers are not like people... they don't have feelings like we do."

Bollocks.

I used the British word for "what a lot of crap" because I have been working with computers now for ages, and I think they have mood swings, act temperamental, have tantrums, and when not treated right, they can be generally bitchy and irritating. Every computer is different, which is why us geeks name them. You have to have a name so you know how to yell at it. If computers worked great all the time, or even most of the time, names would be reduced to addresses. But they always break down. So you don't go, "The machine at IP 10.0.121.66 is acting funny," you go, "Arizona is has gone down," or "Beetlejuice has a bad hard drive," or "I don't know what's wrong with Maria..."

Right now, "Mink" is having issues. As I was typing this, I think I have reduced the problem down to the old CD-RW drive, which is old, and was in a kid's room for a while. Which sucks because while I have another CD-ROM I could use, the CASE this stupid system is in was designed by people who should be forced to sit in a corner and eat cold gruel the rest of their lives so they would never be allowed to build anything again. They have these proprietary "slidy-clippy" things so that instead of something normal like, "Put in drive, screw it in place," it has "remove cheap plastic face, get clips, clip on drive, slide in drive caddy, put face back on case." Now this would be okay if the clips stayed on, which they don't since they stay on by tension only, and they have an annoying tendency to fall off the drive while sliding it into the caddy. Then the plastic face is also cheap, and many of the tabs that hold it on tend to break off when you pull it off and put it back on. So now I have tape holding it in place. (I stopped typing this for a while to do this, and it went okay. The Red Hat 7.1 disks are installing nicely and a lot faster).

Although one of my biggest beefs is that all OS's (Microsoft, Linux, or BSD) have a "time remaining" bar that is, if anything, totally false. My pal Nate called them "BFLs" or "Big [Farking] Liars." In fact, I am watching this bar start from "It will take 5 minutes to install this OS," and is now at 18 minutes to install 5 minutes later. Experience tells me "about an hour, depending on CD drive speed." Now it says 22 minutes. At this rate, logarithmically, it will reach infinity by the end of the day.

Some of you probably are asking why I call my machine "Mink." Mink is the name of the lead character in the Japanese manga (comic) "Dragon Half." She's half dragon, half human. Most of my machines are named after anime characters. They used to be named after characters in "Alice in Wonderland," but I quickly ran out of names. Anime has sort of slid to all animated characters, so now the names are a mix. My working systems in this house are:

Alice, Gryphon, and Jabberwok came from "Alice in Wonderland." Belldandy, Keiichi, and Megumi came from the manga/anime "Ah, My Goddess." Kiki and Osana came from "Kiki's Delivery Service." Then there's Mink from "Dragon Half," Lilo from Disney's "Lilo and Stitch," and finally Mononoke and Totoro, from two of Miyazaki's films (who also did "Kiki's Delivery Service.") The names sort of come to me, and I have this superstition that the name comes from the chip/motherboard combo. Split them (or if they blow up and die), and the machine has to be renamed. That's why some characters from the movies are are missing (like Urd and Skuld, and most of the Alice in Wonderland names like Walrus, Carpenter, Dodo, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, etc...). Don't ask me why, it's just the rule.

"Mink," by the way, also came from the fact that it was a gift (originally a loan) from my friend Brad, a great dragon lover (who also hosts this server). Mink will now be the new main Linux server in the house, but it's taken forever to get this set up. Parts came from Keiichi, Osana, and some freebies I got from friends. Keiichi was a great server. He was a P2/400, but Mink is an Athalon 800, twice as fast, plus she has a better video, onboard sound, and more memory (384mb compared to Keiichi's 128).

Part of the reason stuff shifts around is I am always getting freebies. Most I get to swap out the hardware, but then I store spare parts in systems to make a new one. That's why I have so many now. Only a few of them are on, because I don't want to blow a fuse or have a $2000 electric bill. In my office, Totoro is my main box, Mink will be the new file/DNS server, and Mononoke was the printer server, but she's probably going to be replaced with Osana. Mononoke was the default Win95 box because my printer (and scanner) only had drivers for Windows 95, so it was only turned on when I needed to print or scan something, but to save power, I think I will now put my new (Christine's old) printer on Totoro. I am sure this is as fascinating to my viewers as watching wax harden, but this blog is for posterity for myself as well. Someday I will read this and go, "Awwww... back when printers weren't part of the scanner. How quaint."

Red Hat 7.1 is down to "6:07" to install, which is probably 15 minutes in real life. I wanted RH 8.0, but like I mentioned in another entry, some dude at work borrowed them and never gave them back. I should really stop whining and burn a new set.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:01 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Watery Realm

WELCOME TO MY ONLINE DIARY

Hello, and welcome to my online journal/blog/diary thing. This site is for my friends, online pals, readers of my books, and people who like online journals. Most of this is kind of a brain dump with rants, raves, and thoughts. It may not make much sense sometimes, but it's here for the reading. I am a writer and a computer programmer, husband, father, and friends to a lot of really cool people. Please feel free to leave comments!


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Posted by Punkie @ 09:46 AM EST [Link]


Friday, January 10, 2003

Machines, Parties, and Ex-bosses

Man, I ate too late last night, now I'm up at 4:00am with indigestion. My life isn't all a Lewis Black rant-a-thon, though. I thought I'd use some of this time for the Kaopectate to settle to write that some good stuff does happen to me.

Recently, I got some new stuff. At Evecon, I got a Cisco 2514 Router (it's really Bruce's, but he's letting me borrow it), some T1 CSU box, a Dell GX110 (P2/450), and the final icing on the cake, a 1987, slightly modified, Compaq Personal III "luggable" computer. It's a pre-laptop era blazing 12mhz 286 chip with 2.5mb RAM and an amber monochrome plasma gas screen (pictured on the left). And it works! Well, it did when I fixed it. The proprietary attached keyboard didn't work well, so I took it apart with the new Leatherman Wave I got for Christmas, and cleaned some of the white corrosion off the key contacts on the circuit board. That's when the guy who ended up with it gave it to me. Hee! After I took it home, I cleaned it up, formatted and fixed the hard drive (20mb... oooh...), put MS-DOS 6.22 on it, and it works great. I got a guy on Ebay to sell me a parallel port => CAT5 LAN, so now maybe I can network it. It already has a 1200bps modem, but no thanks! I wouldn't even know what drivers work with it. This is such a geek toy, I love getting old computers to work. The glowing orange plasma screen is so retro!

I used The CPIII to reprogram the router (I have my own Cisco serial to console adapter), which thanks to my Cisco training, I knew how to bypass the password using console break, command mode, the 0x2012 register, and just wiping what was there. I do plan on getting my CCNA, but not until after Katsucon.

The GX110 was in bad shape. It was in a place where there was a lot of coal dust, and the video card was pretty wonky. So bad, in fact, I had to whack it a few times to get it to work. So I put in an old one I had, and viola! It worked. Then I put Mandrake Linux on it, because somebody borrowed my Red Hat CDs and never returned them. I could burn more, but Red Hat is getting ready to release 8.1 soon, so I am going to wait. Then the RAM went bad, but I had some spare RAM, and now it works great. That's the system that got the 60mb Hard drive I was whining about. It has errors. :( The e2fsck utility states it has 15 bad blocks, and I am not sure what I can do to fix them. IBM has a utility, so I will try that. The drive went bad after a corrupted OS install, and even though I have done a total format, it's still wonky.

Later today, we're having a party. A bunch of friends are coming over and playing Cranium. One of the great things about this house is that it's huge, and can hold bigger parties. Now we have decent furniture downstairs, so people can sit around in a wrap-around environment, conducive to conversation. Before, everything was in a straight line, so you had to lean forward and turn to your left or right to speak to anyone. We'll get a fire going, it will be cool. I know Missie, Dave, and Roberta are coming.

I tried to invite some old friends, Gretchen and Mike, both fellow ex-managers of the furntiure chain we used to work for. I saw Gretchen at the Best Buy in Fairfax, and it was awesome to see her again. She was one of the best bosses I ever had, and she was only 18 at the time! Mike was the Uber-manager of the chain, he had been around since its opening. Gretchen finally quit, and we lost touch, while Mike was let go because his boss was ... nuts. He is now working for Matress Discounters in their corporate offices as some high muckety muck. Gretchen gave me their contact info, and we invited them to the party, but we haven't heard back.

Gretchen was an odd one, but in a good way. She ate Mexican cuisine when she got sick, so you'd hear her say, "Ugh... I feel like I am going to throw up... let me go get a burritto..." And she'd actually feel better after eating it. She also used to dance to Tag Team's "Whoop, There It Is!" all the time. I hope her music selection has expanded.

Mike... always struck me as that guy you always see at bull riding rodeos, silent, alone, watching, and pretty innocuous. But once you got to know him, he was very funny, with a wide smile, and a side of wit. One weird trait about him was that no one ever saw him eat. At work, he'd bring a huge thermos of coffee and sip that all day. One assistant he was training got nervous, because when he saw Mike did not eat, he assumed this job didn't include lunch breaks. It took him two days to gain the courage to ask for one. Mike also taught me the killer interview, with questions like, "Give me three reasons not to hire you," and "See this stuff we just got in? This is CRAP! What do you think?"

Mike taught Gretchen, and Gretchen later taught me. I learned GREAT management stuff from them. For a while, they were an item and dated, but then split up. Now they live together again, so I am not sure if they got back togather, or it's platonic. But either way, they sure are cool.

Posted by Punkie @ 04:13 AM EST [Link]


The Gag Ball

About... I don't know, 5-6 years ago? Sometime like that, I posted my last full review of a convention I was working for. I won't go into details, but this following made-up fictional account will give you an idea of why I stopped in general (note, this is a FICTIONAL, made-up, fake parable for illustrative purposes only).

March 1st - CoffeeCon 8: Went, had a good time, did Emcee work, and posted review.
March 3rd - Bob, Head of con suite, had exception to my comments about cheese doodle dust on the rug. Goes into long diatribe about Nazi cleaning staff not giving him a working vacuum cleaner.
March 4th - E-mailing Bob, "It was no big deal" is apparently like pouring gasoline to a fire
March 5th - I remove comment from site. Get another e-mail from Jane, who was running video room. She complains that all I ever mentioned was anime, when she showed more than anime.
March 6th - I tell her "I don't know, all I saw when I dropped by was anime." Get immediate e-mail back stating that she doesn't care what the fark the head of the convention told me, she was showing other stuff than anime. Then she starts cursing out the people who run the con as "Nazis" and "A pair of diseased whores."
March 8th - Jane's friend posts a scathing comment about me on a public list. States I have a thing for Hentai and underage girl's panties. My friend Dawn jumps down her throat, thinking she's doing me a favor by being an ass on my behalf. Bob joins the fray.
March 10th - Bob, Dawn, Jane, and two of Jane's friends get thrown off of the list because the flame war got out of control. The con chairman calls me on the phone, wanting to know what the fark I said to make them react this way. Reads my review. Even though 90% of it is positive, he takes exception to where I mention the hotel desk clerk was rude, the restaurant food was horrible and overpriced, and that the room I was staying in had holes in the drywall. He tells me that it was not his fault. I don't recall saying it was his fault, but he starts to cry that the hotel changed management at the last moment, people are constantly fighting in his life, he's 45 and hasn't had a lover since 1979, and no one loves him. Then starts to turn his frustration into rage, and goes off on his own for a week, telling everyone to fark off.
March 12th - People think *I* make the Chairman drive up to the mountains and sit in a cabin for 5 days in a depressive funk. Now there are some people who hate me, and some people who think they have to choose sides, and choose my side. People are fighting battles FOR me, and I didn't even ask for a war. I take the review down, but the damage has already been done. Any generalities made about generic events, or even specific ones, are taken personally by some people. "You're talking about me, aren't you??" is a common anguished cry. You say someone looked nice in a costume, you get "You mean I normally look bad?? You ass-jerk!" You say you met someone's new boyfriend, you get "So, what now, are you saying I am a slut?" Tempers are out of control. I think about joining the Chairman in his parent's cabin. Finally, it starts to peter out, and the lists went from 50 posts a day back to the usual 2 or 3 a day.
March 31st - Chairman is back, war has died out. Some of the staff has left the convention in a huff, and I have made two new enemies (and their friends). It takes about a year for these "enemies" to fade away into the noise of the past.

This is an exaggerated tale, but some of these events frame the type of crap that kept happening to me. After a while, I was literally afraid to tell the truth, and there was no point to saying, "I went to this convention, it was shiny happy cherry sugar fairy lucky plum fun! Everything was bunnies and kittens and sunshine and flowers and barefoot children giggling and running through meadows..." So I stopped.

The reason I tell this tale is I am suffering... some work-related issues with certain people, but of course I can't say anything because what if it gets back to them? Well, it could cost me my job, or at the very least make it miserable. My job is not miserable, but certain people are so... dammit, morons. I work with some people on some projects that quite literally make me wonder if the person(s) involved work for the competition. You'd think in the technical world, you'd have to have good technical knowledge, but no. One of the amazing eye openers of working in the tech world is that some people seem to cling to jobs because not what they know about the subject their job title is attached to, but because they know how to "play the management" and are far better at politics than actual work. IBM called them "bloated ticks that suck out company blood and wedge themselves into cracks to tightly, you can't pry them out without burning the host." Thankfully, no one I directly work with is THAT bad, my issue is with simple, plain competence. That's all I ask.

If you have a card that says you're an MCSE, please don't ask me how to set up a static IP address in Windows NT. If you have a CCNA, don't you dare ask me what a "subnet mask is for." If you program in any language and write bloated code because you never use arrays, don't call yourself a programmer. I don't care what your card says; you are a $75,000 drain on the company I work for, a hindrance to my job, and an embarrassment to the industry. Sure, I realize sometimes we are thrust into jobs we're not suited for. But at least TRY to do your job. Hell, "fake it until you make it" is fine with me... as long at you are trying to make it. But if I see you coming in late every day, sit in your pod, eating popcorn and powdered donuts until the front your ill-fitting sweater looks like the top of a pine forest in early snowfall, and you ask me again how to do something that was a REQUIREMENT for your HIRE... and you haven't done a lick of real work since you got here a YEAR ago... I hate you. If I were in a fantasy RPG, I'd use you for Balrog fodder. Toss you to the wolves. Sell you to a slavemaster for some quick gold pieces and leave town before the slavemaster finds out how bad you are.

God, the things I could rant about that happen where I work. But can't. First, there's the proprietary disclosure agreement, so I can't say, "My company tests XYZ Hard Drives, and we have proof they cause tongue cancer, but they gave us a lot of money to call them 'bi-labial enhancements.'" Then, I can't even be vague about my work issues. If I say, "There's the guy in our Guam office who never shows up to work, he's out fishing all day, and when he comes back, he smells like old hot dogs..." That guy will read my site, and get all bent out of shape. And really, could you blame him? Some people probably have no idea I hate them because they seem clueless in general... and I want to keep it that way. Of course, someone read this journal right now and thinks I am talking about HIM and HIS powdered donuts. And while I did know someone years ago who wore filthy sweaters that had layers of the week's food on it ("Look, egg salad. Must be Tuesday..."), THAT guy was fired from a company I don't work for anymore, and I don't care what HE thinks at this time.

It's so frustrating.

Gag ball. Leather mask, zipper closed. Yes, master, I have been a bad blogger, can I have another, please?

Posted by Punkie @ 03:34 AM EST [Link]


Thursday, January 9, 2003

Three Teachers I Hated

I saw in someone's blog the other day, a list of all the crappy teachers he had in his acting career. I am pretty lucky since I have only hated, and I mean outright hated, three teachers in my life. Out of the many dozens of teachers I have had, only three of them warrant a mention in the negative department. I decided to air this out


Name: Ms. Cordell
Grade: 5th
Quote: "I hate little boys, they are always up to SOMEthing..."

Man, Ms. Cordell, you really taught me a valuable lesson: that people in positions of power, even minute power like a school teacher, can maximize it to full cruelty. The teacher you replaced, Ms. Estes, was a pretty good teacher, but she had to leave for surgery. You were some half-time replacement, and I don't know where they dug you up from. You epitomized the skinny female overachiever of the early 80s. Part-time teacher, part-time marathon runner, and all-time mean bitch who had some sort of anti-male agenda. I'd say more than 80% of the teachers I have ever had were women, and none of them showed such spite towards my gender as you achieved. In fact, I can't remember one teacher besides you that hated me because I was a male. You kept teaming me up with that bad kid, Kurt Hess, who shot peas and flung butter in the cafeteria. I hated him, he was a such a rotten apple, but you insisted we were essentially the same. You did your best to make sure any spark of happiness or self-confidence in me was squashed. You lied to my parents about my behavior, a fact my mother later admitted seemed far-fetched. You removed me from the A-V Club because "It doesn't require any special cleverness to operate a film projector. See? [click on] See? [click off]." You HATED the fact I was in the GT program, and if it wasn't for the principal intervening, you would have kept me from those classes. I recall you once sent me into the hallway for correcting you, and thereafter you sent me to the principal almost every week. It got so bad, when he asked what I did, and I said, "I don't know," he eventually believed it! You know what he started doing? Light office work. He didn't want to send me back, and we became good friends, and I learned office work. Same with the other boys you sent to the office. It was like a roving team sometimes, the "Cordell rejects." Oddly enough, many of us were GT, too. I think the only good thing about you is that your "marathons" kept you from classes most Fridays in the spring and summer. And sometimes long weekends, where you went to run in another state. What the hell were you running from, anyway? Thankfully, you didn't come back the next year. That black scar over my self esteem salutes you and hopes you got mugged on some 26K run or something.


Name: Ms. Flemming
Grade: 4th - 6th
Quote: "You are such a failure, go sit out in the hall until you are worth something!"

There's a stereotype of female gym teachers, and while looking back on it, there were more PE/Gym teachers who were far more butch than you were, I wouldn't take back the stereotype that you were an overachiever. It was obvious you didn't like that I was fat and unathletic. The former gym teacher, Mr. Hendron, was nice, but sadly, he caught cancer and passed away. You were probably pretty good as PE teachers went, but in the 6th grade, you decided you had enough of me, and delivered that line. The rest of the year, you so humiliated and badgered me, I pretty much still hate exercise because of you. And the kids that beat me up in Junior High. But you know what? No gym teachers I had since were ever even close to as mean as you were to me. I even tried to break my own arm to get out of gymnastics because of you. You were a spiteful thing.


Name: Mr. "J"
Grade: Let's say between 6th and 9th.
Quote: "Okay... what do you want?"

I made a promise to you after you gave me that line that I would never reveal why I was forced to blackmail you. You know what? I didn't really know exactly why you were fired from your former job in Florida, a guidance counselor tipped me off on it. I spent the whole day in the library, looking up Florida newspapers on microfiche, and all I saw that that you and a bunch of teachers were fired because of "questionable practices." Yeah, I bet. Only class I ever had that took a whole week studying the "glorious history" of the KKK. You even had props, and that's what scared the [fark] out of me. You were the people my mother warned me about. That robe. That hateful, white, clean and pressed, pointy-hat robe. And you hung it next to the black kids. Real class. You "lost" our reports, you "didn't get" the homework we turned in, and "couldn't read" our tests. You even thought, just because I had a big nose, that I was "a Jew." Real smart. I will never forget that line you gave me when I told you I knew why you got fired, and I knew your past, and if you dared try the same thing in Florida to me like you did to those others, my friends would go public. You actually cowered. I couldn't imagine what disgusted me most, the fact that I, a preteen, was blackmailing an adult on scant facts and vague innuendos, or the fact you reacted to it with such humility. I have a black stain on my morals because of you. I still have chills hearing that "What do you want?" from the desperate shiver in your voice. But, in your honor, you did follow through our agreement. You will remain anonymous when I speak of you, because I made a promise, and you kept up your end. You gave me straight B's, you left the black kids alone, and you stopped. Talking. About. The "damn Jews." Did you even KNOW how many Jewish kids were in that class? Racist scum.

There. I feel a lot better. Three teachers out of... wow, like 70 or 80 isn't bad at all. Maybe when I have time, I can list the huge slew of good ones. Sra. Bomar, Ms. Ray, Dr. Joyce, Mr. Levin, Ms. Garrett, and the list goes on and on...

Posted by Punkie @ 06:08 PM EST [Link]


I am not a therapist

One of the hardest things to do to a trusted friend or loved one is to let go and say "I can't help you."

I still haven't learned this all the way. I have had friends with mental problems, addictions, co-dependant or abusive relationships, and emotional disorders. I am always trying to help, and I don't want to stop that part, but I want a better understanding of when to pull back and raise your hands in defeat. I guess you only get that from experience.

Sometimes, I wish there was something like a Telezapper for these kinds of relationships. Someone would try and suck at your sympathy teats for the umpteenth time, but instead of attention, would get a recording, "I am sorry, but this relationship has become repetitive and dysfunctional on both sides, and will now cease to continue. Please seek professional help, and do not call again. Your response to this message will not be recorded. Goodbye and good luck." Of course, if I could sever friendships like that with no feeling invested, I'd be a total jerk. I just wish I had a device like that so I could be lazy and avoid saying it myself.

Often, I don't. I use the lazy passive resistance thing. I don't call. I avoid them at parties, or treat them like some outer circle friend I don't know very well, but will be polite with because they are a fellow human. I stop listening, or form a repeated response like, "You know my opinion on this subject, I will not repeat it, and the subject will now change." I hate being put in that position.

I am not a therapist. I am not any sort of legal help, nor will gaining my side in any argument make it any more or less valid. I am a person, just like anybody else. And your set of problems, my friend, are out of my ability or desire to fix.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:34 AM EST [Link]


Tuesday, January 7, 2003

Where's my hard drive?

I had a 60MB IBM Deskstar with some errors, and I took it out of my machine to look at it later and possibly fix the errors. Now it's gone. This is annoying. I know WHERE I put it, but that never helps, because it's not there. And I have a machine open and ready for it. But now it's gone. I know it must have gone SOMEwhere...

I also have too many computers now. I have a 486, an AMDK5/133 (like a Pentium 1), and two Pentium 166s I don't really need. I don't want to toss them out, because they do work, but I want to make sure wherever they go, they get used to the very last drop. I hate waste, but I hate clutter, too. My den is a mess!

[Edited a few days later]
I found it. Right where I knew I left it. I searched there like a dozen times. This is frustrating because while looking for it, I kept going back to where I knew I left it, and did not see it. I said to myself, "Dolt! You already looked there a dozen times, what, you think it will come back?" I said that to dissuade me from repeating such a redundant action. Well, it did come back. It went on vacation. Or was kidnapped by gremlins. Something. Argh! Now I will forever remember this as, "See? On the dozen and first time, it came back!" Then I will repeat this redundant action. Well, now that I have it, I hope I can fix it.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:40 PM EST [Link]


Do bad things always come in threes? Plus: Finding patterns and resolution

I don't know if bad things always come in threes or not, but I have noticed:

- Celebrity deaths seem to clump together
- Plane crashes also seem to happen close to one another
- Bad luck definitely has denser periods than normal

I have lived long enough to noticed that bad things usually clump together, and I am not sure why that is. And while I can't say it's always in "threes" or "pairs" or whatever, it does come in groups or what I have started referring to as "waves." I look back at my diaries and see this. I have two sets of bad luck waves: the big and the small.

The small waves happen like this: You go to work, you spill coffee on your keyboard and mouse. You get spares, and later, your boss walks in and thinks you've been goofing off when you were supposed to be working. Turns out he accidentally deleted your e-mail reports with his spam filter. Then your sister calls and starts screaming that she's sick of dealing with mother all the time, and now it's your turn. Then lunch. Often the small waves have little long-term impact.

The big waves are very much worse. My most recent that's still in my memory was the period from September until February of 2001. In a post-Sweden "I miss my family" wave, some jerks fly planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and mails anthrax everywhere. Then my wife breaks her ankles falling down stairs. Then my cat Oreo dies a slow and painful death, and it ends with me having double-lung pneumonia. All in six months. I look at my diaries and see more patterns, which is why this year I am going to try and keep a better blog.

Now, I have approached it as "perception," but the last part of 2001 was definitely not in my head. Any one of those events would have ruined my year on their own, but looking back at everything, even my writing from back then, it was obvious a wave of... well, I hate to say "evil," because that assumes consciousness, but just a wave of bad things. Why does this happen?

My dyslexic/creative brain is looking for a pattern. This stems form my type of childhood, where I learned from peer counseling sessions that often people in loss of control try and find control, and that starts superstitions. My childhood was out of control. My parents' moods and attitudes changed daily, there was no way to tell what I would walk into at home. The distinct ability to detect subtle nuances and patterns kept me from having a terrible childhood turn into a deadly one. You knew around report card time, bullies were at their worst, so you make path changes when you walk home. Bullies tended to hang out where traffic was high, but they could still remain hidden, usually behind a fence where there was a space to drag victims and beat the living snot out of them. They never hung out much in forests or creek beds, unless they were lighting matches or drinking beer. So I changed my paths. I was rewarded early on for finding patterns. Now as an adult, I can usually detect when people are angry, or when coworkers might be at their worst (Mondays, coffee maker busted, better hide out in the lab). I have also learned that my boss takes Mondays and Tuesdays off more than any other day of the week, so I plan my projects accordingly (no, not to avoid him, but not do projects where I need his input on Monday or Tuesday).

But I am always looking for the bigger plan. I excelled in Meteorology, and worked with an Earth Science teacher as his lab assistant one year. He was very happy to have me as an assistant, because while most of his student assistants always blew him off, I could predict ahead of time what he might need or want for the next class, and have it ready, and inform him of it. We'd spend after school hours discussing weather patterns and making bets on what will happen in seven days (we usually were both right, but he was a little better at predicting mountain effects). I am really good with weather and spacial relations, and from a 24-hour satellite photo can predict the weather for the next few days with the same accuracy of a news weather man (about 90%), even at a casual glance (but only for the US central east coast, don't ask me to predict what will happen in France and the UK... I dunno). So when I got older, and started looking at macro patterns in life...

I see patterns in how people evolve. Personalities and opinions are usually too hazardous to guess, but the general picture is that I would forgive an 18 year old for saying something totally stupid more than a 35 year old. It's just a matter of experience.

Many years ago, I tried to describe the though processes of animals to someone who just assumed they were "dumb." I said it like this:

In the computer world, we have a term called "resolution." Resolution means how many tiny blocks of color can fit into one picture. Now say you are asked to make a replica of something you saw with a bunch of child's blocks and a square meter of display space. Say you saw the Eiffel Tower. The blocks you are given are ten ordinary wooden blocks. Pretty tough, huh? Unless you are a genius, I bet if you asked anyone else what you have created, they might only say "A pile" or "a tower of some kind." Now suppose you were given a thousand smaller blocks. Now you could make a better picture. Maybe a few people will guess the Eiffel Tower. Now say you were given a million, and a tool to put up hundreds of blacks in one stroke. Now most people will guess, even if you are a bad artist, what you made.

Animals have only a few blocks. A slug has light and dark, hot or cold, wet or dry, food and not food, mateable or not. I am sure they have a few more, but slugs are pretty basic. They don't have a brain to understand abstract concepts like speech and emotions. Now dogs and cats do. That comes from the fact that dogs and cats are hunters, and have to take in a lot of information to find and kill prey. They have many more blocks, and can understand a crude form of communication with each other and other species like humans. Humans have a LOT of blocks. They can make art, do math, postulate things like "why" and "howcome?" This not only comes from experience, but human communication is so advanced, they can learn from other's experiences, even if they never saw what was being described. You, in fact, are doing it right now. You are reading my thoughts, and (hopefully) understanding my experiences and lessons even though you were not here to witness them by only using abstract patterns called "letters." Humans value information, it makes us grow.

So what does this have to do with patterns? As time goes by, we all gain more blocks. This is called experience. Sometimes, we actually try and re-arrange these blocks like part of a puzzle. have you ever worked on a puzzle where you didn't have the box to see the final picture? Life is like that. As we get older, we begin to find all the edge pieces, and start filling in the middle parts. We can only do this if we see patterns, and even if we don't know what they mean, we can make theories based on other patterns.

So when I see bad things happen in clumps, I try and theorize what is going on. Some blame these things on God or the Devil, but that seems too simplistic. Before we had radar and satellites, or even thermometers and barometers, weather was a lot of guesswork. It seemed that weather just came and did what it pleased, and changed or didn't from day to day. All you knew were seasons and some patterns, like snow usually comes in the winter, tornados happen in the fall, and so on. And most people only paid attention to stuff that mattered, like crops and when to harvest. Living in the microcosm, and not in the macrocosm. Now we can see patterns, and have enough data, past experience to predict the future.

I am living living in the world's microcosm, seeing these crude patterns of bad and good, wondering how to define it, and ultimately predict it.

"Ha," says God. "Good luck!"

Posted by Punkie @ 04:38 PM EST [Link]


Yo yo Punkie, wazzap?

Okay, this is embarrassing.

My friend we'll call "Gail" has a son who is 16. He just started driving. We'll call him "Todd." Todd is a youth living in Reston, but he wants to be all bad-ass gangsta. I had a talk with him about the argument between his mom and him about spending $3000 on chrome rims for his car (and a gun to protect them). Todd's friend "Peewee," has had two sets of rims on his car, and both got stolen within a week. Yes, Todd is being dumb, but that's not the point. The point is that I started to talk like them, and I don't know how this happened.

I have this... "quirk," that when I hang around someone with an accent for a while, I pick it up. It can take as little as ten minutes with British and Southern accents, longer for others. But before, it was just accents. The only time I ever started picking up lingo was with Aussie techs a few years ago, when they'd go, "Right, see here, mate. Joey's gone on walkabout, and beep or no, he's in the boosh." (Okay, look, my assistant has wandered off, I can't page him, and he might as well be out in the wilderness.)

So imagine my surprise, when I started talking street lingo to two teens like some Yo MTV Rap Veejay:

Let me get this straight, home. You want to spend a bunch of benjamins for some dope chrome rims and a firecracker to look all OG, yet Peewee is lining some street fool's pockets with his insecurities? Yo, that is wack. What do you want to look all OG for, anyway? OG is for some fool junior high dropout who will shoot you for your car because he's got a small peeni, his girlfriend smoked all the good crack, and left P. Diddy junior back in the crib. He'll pump you full of lead like a carnival toy before you can even find the safety of your $600 pistol dick, fool! Shee-it, you ain't got no brains homey. You don't want to be OG, you want to me ODB for the honeys, and they will treat you like cash until the money runs out, and then you'll be like the shell of a car in Anacostia. Stop spending the greens for your pimp threads and get a decent education.

Damn, where did that come from? I *never* talk like that, and even if I did channel The Notorious B.I.G. for a second, I saw myself sounding like Vanilla Ice.

That is wack, yo.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:12 AM EST [Link]


Monday, January 6, 2003

I love my job

I do. Sorry, I know that sounds conceited, but I do love what I do: I program and build machines all day. It's like playing with Legos and solving puzzles. How cool is that? And people love me here. Today's ego boost came during a meeting when a well-respected coworker said:

Punkie: So you want me to learn this new language and program existing infrastructure with it?
Co-woker: Yes, don't worry, it's easy.
Punkie: I have been told that before. Are you sure I can do this?
Co-worker: I picked you because you're the best out there.
His Boss: I know. I have seen your code.

Daaaammn... I better live up to this!

Posted by Punkie @ 01:50 PM EST [Link]


Why "Uncle Punkie?"

Some of you may have noticed I am starting to refer to myself as "Uncle" Punkie for 2003. Well, this started when my friend's daughter was about seven, and she called me "Mr. Punkie," which I thought was adorable. Then other friend's kids started to call me "Uncle Punkie," and now even my own family members are doing it. Then I saw Wil Wheton call himself "Uncle Willy" a lot in his blog, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:46 PM EST [Link]


Some updates to the blogging... and answers to the mail

Blog-dates
Okay, I have made some major changes on my diaries here so they are a bit more integrated with the new blog.

* I have reformatted the Pre-1996 through 2002 diaries to mesh with Greymatter
* I have fixed and reformatted the 2001 diaries (oh, posting them is only a year late)
* I have split 2002 into four parts, divided by season (the single file was over 130k!)
* I have made the menu of all the diary parts in the header of the main index page

Hope that some of my fans find this easier to read.

Mail Call
Okay, if I were able to list the two things I get mail on the most is my essay on Child Leashes (summary: I find them degrading) and my essay on "What is Punk?" (summary: it's not definable). Look, I am not going to change my opinions on these, and it amazes me how angry some people get about them. I am not posting them in fanmail anymore, because I say the same thing over and over.

But recently, my diary entry on "Coming to terms with my ugliness," last year has generated a lot of mail. I divide them into three main parts: people who think it's insulting THEM, people who think it's insulting ME (and tell me to stop), and people who think it's insulting in general. Look, I am ugly. I am okay with that. I am reclaiming the word "ugly." I am not saying I'm ugly for pity or to patronize anyone. I alone posted that, and saying I meant all people with big noses are ugly was not what I meant, but come on, how many fat, big-nosed, acne-scarred men with poor posture and glasses are used as male models? I can't think of one. All the male models are shirtless athletes with chiseled faces, six-pack abs, and seem to be looking slightly to the left as if to say, "I shy away from my obvious beauty." And if you look like that, that's fine. I don't. I don't even consider "ugly" to be an insult anymore than homosexuals look at the term "queer" anymore. It's kind of a cute word, actually, like "mooshoo" or "cookie." So stop sending me letters about that.

Also, thanks for the support about racism. It's good to hear that "I can't count how many Asian friends I have because I don't sort people that way," is not just me, but a lot of people out there. A Korean friend of mine added, "I never count how many white people I know, either." And I am sure the letters about "How to tell where someone is from in Asia by face," were well-meaning, but don't be offended if I didn't take them seriously. Maybe they would have made more sense in 1910, but in today's modern world where people mix and move so much, it's a pointless endeavor. Not all redheads with green eyes are Irish Catholics, you know. I freaked out a little there because of the hate I got off this one site, but it's over now, and maybe got some people to think a little.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:43 PM EST [Link]


Lack of sleep... brain won't shut off.

I hate my brain sometimes. It's an engine that runs and runs and runs and I can't turn it off until my thoughts drop from sheer exhaustion. I have always had trouble falling asleep, even since I can remember being told I had a bedtime.

At first, I had no bedtime. My mother told me she had this "he'll fall asleep when he's ready," philosophy, which I was quite happy with. But I had this problem where I'd fall asleep with the light on. This wasn't so much a problem when the only light in my room was a 30 watt bulb on a dark red lamp with a brown shade. This was murder the read by, and my mother often found be asleep with a book, the lampshade tilted back to give me more light. Finally, I "graduated" to a 200 watt lamp when I was about 8. This was so much easier on my eyes, but my father was angry that it was "expensive" that I fell asleep with my light on. Thus, very early on, my punishment was to take away my lamp. Since I was living in a very dark room with little window light, once the sun set, my room was almost completely black with some shadows that would come on when a car would pass down our road (my windows were at ground level, but up very high in my room, and the windows were covered by bushes). Taking away my light was a very bad thing because I was petrified of the dark. Petrified. Yet, it took me a long time to remember to turn off my light when I fell asleep, so my lamp was quite often taken away from me for punishment. Most of the time, I managed to wake up before my parents did, and I turned off the light in the early morning when the sun had already risen. But sometimes, I forgot. The light was taken away for days, maybe a week, depending on how angry my father was at the time.

When I was about 11 or 12, some doctor or teacher or maybe just a woman's magazine told my mother that I should have a bedtime. So she kind of over-reacted. My bedtime was my grade, which meant in 6th grade, I was to be in bed by 6pm. This really sucked. Not only did it kill a lot of my already drying up social life, but if my light had been left on, I'd have to be in the dark. I swear to god, I was scared of the dark for so long, I still remember I'd hide, shaking under my blanket, hoping monsters would not eat me. No one ever told me there were no monsters growing up, and I had so many fears and neuroses by this point from my day life, I doubt if anyone was there to calm me down, it would have worked anyway. But there was one horrific side effect of being alone in the dark that haunts me to this day: my imagination.

Sure, it's great to be a creative writer and have imagination. But when I was 12, sitting alone in the dark, with nothing for my brain to do, it made up stuff. Bad stuff. It would replay everything I ever did wrong, like some sort of "If I could go back in time, this is what I should have done..." It was like being in a sensory depravation tank, tripping on bad acid. It literally drove me crazy. I could not escape anything. If I came up for fresh air outside of the blanket, a monster would get me. If I stayed under the blanket, my own thoughts tortured me. It was worse on those nights when my mother was drunk, saying what she felt, chasing my father around the house with her rhetoric. Sometimes he'd argue back, and that's when I knew he would come get me and I would somehow be to blame for whatever. My father, very early on, removed the lock from my door, and in doing so, made the doorknob latch stop working altogether, so I could not escape him. Some days when his temper was really bad, I'd take hide in my "nest," which was a space under the bed where I'd crawl like a bomb shelter, then stuff the blankets around me outside, pushing against my toys, so that a cursory look made it look like just a pile of toys I stuffed under the bed. It was quite effective, I never got caught there. When my father would burst into my room, angry, and rip off my blanket and not see me, he'd stop. I don't know if he was looking around, or trying to hear me breathe, but I'd hold my breath, and wait. And wait. I'd hear him breathe through his nose like some sort of angry gorilla, then stroll out of my room. I'd wait a loooong time until I heard him elsewhere in the house before I dared get out from under the bed (thinking he'd pretend to leave my room, then be there waiting to find me emerging from my hiding space), and most of the time, I'd just fall asleep under there. Only once did he check under the bed with a flashlight, and another time he poked at the pile around me with some stick or something, and while it jabbed me hard in the bladder, I didn't move or make a sound. As an adult, I can't believe that he didn't know, and I wonder if he knew and was satisfied I was hiding from him, or when he saw me gone, maybe thought I ran away or something. I'd ask him now, but he'd deny it or make up something. Hell, he's probably reading this now, laughing. But he can't get me anymore.

I think I grew out of being terrified of the dark during my brief punk days because I was out with friends at 2am, after seeing Rocky Horror or something. I recall someone telling me that she had been told as a little girl that "Don't be scared of the dark because of monsters, they can't see in the dark, either. You're safer in the dark than in the light." I think she was quoting a punk or new wave tune at the time. I recall thinking that the artist who wrote that was very wise, because my life was like that. The daylight was my hell, and at least in the dark of the night, I was safer: the people who made me miserable were asleep. I am glad I didn't make the next leap of logic, "and vulnerable," because I'd probably be doing some time now. I never get upset that I "just took the abuse without a fight" back then, because the person who resides in the body now would have done some serious damage, and I would have been either dead or in jail for killing somebody. That's one score for submissiveness.

When I was about 15, the whole structure of my father's rule totally fell apart. Fairfax County had determined I was being abused, and after some court-mandated social counseling and badly-needed psychotherapy, my father "became disgusted" with me, ignored my presence, and my life vastly improved. Some day, that whole story will be on here, but for now, you'll have to wait.

But fast forward a little. As a teen, my habits shifted from day person to night person. To this day, I still like the night, which is odd, because I have very poor night vision. I mean, even in dim light, I stumble around, and as my wife and friends can attest, in low light like a night in a parking lot, I can't see anything but lights. Now glow, to reflections, no... whatever anyone sees in the dark (I am totally mystified by all of your night vision powers, it seems almost illogical). I am almost totally blind. But, hey. Darkness is when the fun happens.

But sleep... never easy. My brain likes to work overtime. Right now, as I write this line, it's 2:58 am. In 4 hours, I am supposed to be at work. In 7, I am supposed to be in a very important meeting. I'd give anything to be able to sleep right now, but once I lay down, my brain just keeps going and going. Half the time, about stupid stuff, like some puzzle, or something I wrote, or want to write, or what I just saw in a movie or whatever. Random stuff. The other half, sad to say, is me, back at age 11, worrying about something like a very bad thing that happened to me, or whether my friends like me or not, or if the latest health problem will kill me, or... and this is the worst: past childhood traumas. I have flashbacks of the first 18 years of my life like a war veteran has about a battle that went wrong. I *hate* those. My brain just goes on and on and on about how I was treated by my parents, or my mother's death, or past suicide attempts, or my father abusing me, and so on and so on and so on. ARGH! Those make me so mad, because I keep going, "Why? It's in the past, it's over, and since my mother's dead an my father's in denial, I am the only one who remembers!" But then, when I have told my thoughts to shut up, I have stopped paying attention to my thoughts, like not more than ten minutes later, there I am again! Sometimes, if the memory is really bad, like memories of bullies beating me up, or a friend who double crossed me, or my parents fighting over me, about me, my adrenaline is pumping like I am really there. I get so mad at myself and my brain, because that brain will be so cranky in 7 hours, whining it needs rest and sleep... well, SORRY BRAIN! IF YOU'D SHUT OFF AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME.... well, of course, the irony is my brain is also writing this. What a self-critical organ! My stomach never... oh, wait, yes it does. Okay, my lungs never do that. They never go, "I don't wait air..." and then later, "Augh, wait, yes I do!" Well, they do if I am on Percocet, but that's not their fault.

Side note: My mother used to work at a bank, back in the mid 1960s. She lived in San Francisco at the time, putting my father through college. She rode the cable car back and forth from work, and told me that one of her coworker friends could sleep on command. She'd turn to my mother and say, "I will go to sleep now, wake me when we get to work," and in less than a minute, she'd be totally asleep. I. Envy. That. Woman. My mother told me that she even seemed to "know" when to wake up just before their stop, so my mother never had to actually rouse her most of the time. I would kill for that power. There are so many moments in my life where just falling asleep on command would make me a much more relaxed and rested person.

I don't know if I have a sleep disorder. I have a sort of "brain won't shut off" disorder. Brain will keep running and running and running until finally the body takes over, and the brain literally just stops from complete exhaustion. My body is also VERY picky about where and how it sleeps. I cannot fall asleep sitting up, so I never dozed off in class or at work, and sadly, stay awake on long intercontinental flights. My Swedish relatives will attest to how groggy I am when I get to Sweden. I also tend to wake up at the slightest noise, and even at age 34, I still have bad dreams that wake me up, then I can't get to sleep again for hours.

I have considered sleeping pills, but they'd have to be prescription. Over-the-counter pills have never worked for me. Dammit. I was later told by someone that they contain a trace of mustard seed in them, so someone who takes enough to kill them will also have enough mustard gas in them to make them throw up the pills. I don't know if that's true or not, but it does make you think about how potent the OTC pills are. I have even tried painkillers, but they seemed to keep me awake. Oh yeah. Tylenol has caffeine. Warm milk gives me cramps. The best thing is usually to do housework, but then it wakes up my wife, so that's no good. And the cats get mad when I am up, like I am interfering in their scheduling.

So... here I am. Awake. On the web. Hoping to get my brain to wear out so I can do what my body craves so badly... rest.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:20 AM EST [Link]


Friday, January 3, 2003

Evecon 20

Hard to believe that Evecon 20 has come and gone. My first con (that I paid for) was Evecon 2, 18 years ago. The first con ever was Balticon earlier that year, but I didn't pay, and the guy who took me abandoned me under the stairs with Star Trek Filkers. I was so traumatized that when offered free "Buckaroo Banzai" promotional stuff, I said, "Who? No way." That thumping sound is me kicking myself. I saw some of that "free crap" like head banners and buttons go for $50 on Ebay. My head was too fat to wear one, anyway...

But enough about my fat head, how about Evecon? Well, despite royally making a mess of things for Evecon programming, it went off pretty well, and Cheryl did not kill me. Thankfully, and gratefully, Kory Kaese will be doing programming for next Castlecon, so I am back to "Here are my panels, put them in nice slots... ahhhhh..." In fact, after Katsucon 9, all cons will be like that for me. I refuse to do any convention work that requires a lot of my home time for the next few years because I will be writing and trying to get published. But more on that later.

I had a good time at Evecon, and like most of the time, I met some people I knew existed, but never got to really know. I won't give their names, but two people really impacted me. The first was a girl who was not only older than I thought, but in 1987, she got shot in the head "by accident" by an ex-boyfriend. I had always assumed she had Cerebral Palsy, because she walked with a pronounced limp, and had one hand that seemed to work a lot less than the other. I have a few friends with CP, and discussed it with them at length, so I assumed... wrong. Well, it turns out that she did not have CP, but that was the side effect of being shot in the head. The moment she told me that, I had an insta-second of "Oh, fudge, I just committed a major social faux pas," to a Harry Potter like feeling of, "She is the girl who lived. She must be alive for a good reason." I mean, not everyone can claim such a head wound and live to tell about it and still have all their mental facilities about them. I felt in awe. The second was a man I have known for... a long time, over ten years at least. He had one of those jobs that, well, if you live in this area, you know that a lot of people have jobs they just can't talk about. "I work for the government," is about all you'll get, and if you demand to know more, you will get an icy stare. Well, I found out what he did, and what he went through. I listened with rapt attention about how we worked for the CIA, helped found the DEA, and lived through a POW experience in 'Nam. I don't think he wants his experience public, so I will just say what he lived through dug deep at my bones. I liked and respected him before, but now I really knew a lot about him.

I also spent a lot of the con exhausted, as I am healing from the December Sickness of Doom (like that title?). Since I lost so much blood internally, and my digestive processes can't quite get all the food I eat until it heals, I am tired most of the time. The doctor says I should get better by mid-January, and already, as I type this, I am not as exhausted as I have been. I have also lost a lot of weight, about 20 pounds, according to the scale. My pants feel very loose. People were very nice to me, and fed me a lot of chocolate, which helped.

I didn't have a room. Our normal dogsitter (a good friend) was really depressed because of the season, and so backed out on us at the last moment (which we're not holding against her). This left us with no one to sit our dog, and even though our pals Dan and April were staying at the house for the convention, they also worked long hours, and our dogs had to go sometime. So we'd go to the con at 10am, go back home at 5pm, come back, and party until 12 or 1am. This worked out okay, but I still missed not having a room at the con. I wished I could bring the dogs to the con, but noooooooo! Hotels and doggies don't mix. I think people who think dogs are messy are fat old bald white men who never had a pet other than some trophy horse or prize hound or something. That's my crackpot theory, and I am sticking to it.

Memories from the con: Peeps! Flashy blinky thingees. Being told by a merchant on Sunday, "Yes! Now I broke even!" Acid Rock Bands. Kites. Dan's hilarious radio ads. Good restaurant food.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:42 PM EST [Link]


Self-gifting for Christmas

Well, I know posted about Christmas in 2002, but I ended up self-gifting myself a Lego set I have wanted since I was 5. It's a Lego Hopper, form one of the orginal town sets (pictured on the right). To me, as a kid, this was the Ultimate. I got it as part of my "heal my youth" expenditures, which also got me a replacement Fisher-Price Airport two years ago. I scan Ebay for these things, but when this item rarely came up, it was for hundreds of dollars, and folks, I am not THAT desperate. But thanks to BrickLink, the online Lego Shopper's Garage Sale for Lego sets, parts, and pieces, I found a seller in Australia who was selling his (sans box) for under $50. Dude. I had to have it, who cares about the box. A Paypal transaction and two weeks later, it came, all mushed and smashed by US Customs, but complete with instructions. I built it last night. Nerdvana! I don't know why I never got the set as a kid. I don't recall anyone telling me I couldn't have it, and I must have asked for it, but I probably got the "Well, see, you have a LOT of Legos already..." I think this would have been a reasonable response, and since I can't recall any other... there you are. Part of why I wanted this so bad was that yellow conveyor belt that takes up half the picture. It's all one piece. I played with it a lot when I opened my Australian package (which came in some "Melbourne's Own Iced Pies" box). The belt slips, but the rubber is old, after all. But as I assembled it from the yellowing instruction pamphlet, it was like some deep light went off in my head, like some gap in my life was complete. But not like the airport.

The Fisher-Price Airport I got last year (photo on left). It was the model from 1972, and I had one as a wee kid, and I loved that thing more than... any toy at the time. But then I poured orange juice into it. I am not sure why, but when you're 5... heck, I even threw a Xylophone mallet through the window of the house we were renting. I wasn't a bad kid, but I had my moments. Well, as the OJ aged, the airport got stained, and began to smell, but I screamed and yelled and protested when my mother suggested we throw it away. Then, when we moved from California to the DC area, it was throw away when I wasn't looking. Now, as an adult, I forgive my mother for doing this, because I am now a parent, and I mean Yeech! Rotting OJ! But the "throwing things away when I am not looking" became a theme growing up. In fact it became part of the materialist paranoia I have now that when I am not looking, stuff I have will vanish. Of course, this stems from the overal instability of my mother's alcoholism and father's random abuse. My house was one big circus. Getting this airport and playing with it, even for a little bit, filled in some emptiness. And hell, it's cheaper than a therapist.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:58 PM EST [Link]


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