so i came up with a new theory today. stick with me.
ever been to a baseball game, football game, well... anywhere where there was a women's public restroom? ever noticed how there's a long line for that restroom? ever noticed how women never really seem to fart in public or take a crap when they're over at your house or at your friends house? for years and years i chalked this up to two scenarios. A: women don't crap or fart nearly as much as men, so they do it all while they're at home. or B: women just don't crap or fart, so there's no reason to ever have to do either when they're at your house. Today however, i made a startling discovery while at the zoo. I noticed that any time i've ever really spent an entire day with a girl, they have to use the bathroom at least once and there's always "a really long line", which brings me to my theory. I think that every girl, when she is very young, is told by her mother to hold it until they are in a public place, wherein they can blame the amount of time they spent in the bathroom on the "long line". That way, no matter who has to do what, there will always be a line because it's been a week since they went last, so their story holds up. it's a big circular reasoning pattern, but it had to be started somewhere, but it has been working ever since. beautifully. not only do they not have to go in front of men, but they don't have to stink up your bathroom, just the women's bathrooms in a public place, like an amusement park or something.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
wasting time, wasting time
i just read a little blurb about how many people waste time in the work place and it turns out to be something like 20% of the workday is wasted by the average american worker. for me, it's more like 99.9%. i'm done with my work before 10am every single day, and even when i do get a job to do, it takes me about an hour, then i'm back to wasting time until the day is over. if there's one thing i've learned from this job (and it is certainly not anything to do with actual engineering) it's that life is too short to work at a job you hate. why would you want to work at a job where you spend a majority of the time just wasting time? granted, this internship is different because i don't really have a "place" in the company, i'm just kind of here to learn a little bit about how the company works and how businesses like this one work. one thing that i've noticed is that as this internship goes on, i've become much more comfortable about the fact that i just don't have anything to do. when i started working here, i was very concerned with getting my work done, being perfect, looking perfect, etc. now... i could care less. i think everyone who works around here knows that A: i don't have anything to do except waste time, thereby wasting the company's money and B: coming to my cubicle to talk to me about bikes is perfectly ok, and is a good way for them to get out of doing their work. After doing a little bit more thinking about how things have gone this summer, i put together a handy little qualitative graph representing some aspects of this job that have changed since i started here.
there you have it. 10 minutes until the whistle blows, then i'm back at it again tomorrow. oh yeah, and the paper that i drew my pants reference man on had some other drawings on the back of it for a product that i worked on and my boss took it yesterday. hopefully he won't be too confused by that little guy. i would be.
Monday, July 23, 2007
a tale of pants
i was on a bike ride a few days ago and noticed, on the same sidewalk, a very old man with his pants almost up to his shoulders and a kid with his pants almost down to his knees. i started thinking about the height of pants, age, and what they have to do with each other, and decided that they are most definately connected. intimately at that.
it all starts when you're born. diapers can really only sit in one place, which is right at the hips. not only that, but aside from the ocassional fumbling babysitter, your mom was pretty good at sticking that diaper right in the same spot every time. even when she had to change you on the floor in the airport to the disgust of everybody around you. as an average kid, you don't start dressing yourself until you're around 5 or 6, at which point, you are probably wearing your sister's hand me downs, which are a little too small to fit on the waist, so where else can you wear them but up a little too high. even when your mother buys you nice clothes that do fit, they fit "the right way" and sit somewhere around belly button height. around the age of 10, you start getting your own clothes, and you dress yourself nicely for class, hoping that the pretty girl that you just started noticing last week might think that you look "nice" and might want to "hang out" with you a little bit more. now here's where things really start going bad. as soon as junior high hits, the pants height takes an alarming dip in the negative. why, i can't explain. i did it myself, and still don't know why. wearing those pants as low as possible without showing the goods was definately the fashion, and making sure that you had some good looking boxer shorts was just as important as keeping your shoes clean. after you realize how stupid that stage is, there comes high school and then college, where the pants return to somewhere around waist height. this is mostly likely because you've been wearing the same pants since junior high (in my case) and you've grown a little bit, and that's just where they fit. other times, it's because that hot girl in your class (not in my case) seems to dress nicely and you think if you dress nicely too, she might notice you. not usually the case, but you try anyways. once you're out of college, you have to go get a job, and the pants rise just above the waistline as you try to impress your boss to get that all too important raise/bonus/extra day off work. the next milestone is the ubiquitous mid life crisis, where, along with your dignity, the pant line dips a little bit as you strive to be cool and hip and fit in with your kids, who at this point are probably going through the lowest pants-point in their lives at the same time. after you realize that not only is your wife not impressed, but neither is your boss or kids, so you bring 'em back up slowly over the next couple of years. at this point, resistance is all but futile. from that point until you die, the pants rise almost exponentially until they're right up there next to your pocket protector. below i've included a handy reference chart as well as a detailed (and heavily researched) graph to see where you stand next to the average male.
it all starts when you're born. diapers can really only sit in one place, which is right at the hips. not only that, but aside from the ocassional fumbling babysitter, your mom was pretty good at sticking that diaper right in the same spot every time. even when she had to change you on the floor in the airport to the disgust of everybody around you. as an average kid, you don't start dressing yourself until you're around 5 or 6, at which point, you are probably wearing your sister's hand me downs, which are a little too small to fit on the waist, so where else can you wear them but up a little too high. even when your mother buys you nice clothes that do fit, they fit "the right way" and sit somewhere around belly button height. around the age of 10, you start getting your own clothes, and you dress yourself nicely for class, hoping that the pretty girl that you just started noticing last week might think that you look "nice" and might want to "hang out" with you a little bit more. now here's where things really start going bad. as soon as junior high hits, the pants height takes an alarming dip in the negative. why, i can't explain. i did it myself, and still don't know why. wearing those pants as low as possible without showing the goods was definately the fashion, and making sure that you had some good looking boxer shorts was just as important as keeping your shoes clean. after you realize how stupid that stage is, there comes high school and then college, where the pants return to somewhere around waist height. this is mostly likely because you've been wearing the same pants since junior high (in my case) and you've grown a little bit, and that's just where they fit. other times, it's because that hot girl in your class (not in my case) seems to dress nicely and you think if you dress nicely too, she might notice you. not usually the case, but you try anyways. once you're out of college, you have to go get a job, and the pants rise just above the waistline as you try to impress your boss to get that all too important raise/bonus/extra day off work. the next milestone is the ubiquitous mid life crisis, where, along with your dignity, the pant line dips a little bit as you strive to be cool and hip and fit in with your kids, who at this point are probably going through the lowest pants-point in their lives at the same time. after you realize that not only is your wife not impressed, but neither is your boss or kids, so you bring 'em back up slowly over the next couple of years. at this point, resistance is all but futile. from that point until you die, the pants rise almost exponentially until they're right up there next to your pocket protector. below i've included a handy reference chart as well as a detailed (and heavily researched) graph to see where you stand next to the average male.
AND just so you can't say i never did anything for you, i fit that there graph with a quadratic curve with the equation y = 0.003x^2 - 0.1475x + 0.4082, so you can see where you should be wearing your pants. Myself, as a 21 year old, using that equation, should be wearing my pants at a height of about 1.3663 inches below the waistline. sounds about right. try it out!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
and then reality set in and said "seriously? really? you know where this is going, you're not that dumb."
i think i have a problem with having an overly romatic view of life. it's probably because i don't watch tv and only read books written either before world war 2 or shortly afterwards, but i really do have too much faith in romance. too much faith in the way things could be and not the way things are. i should probably get on that though, the world is a pretty rough place and i treat it like a day at disneyland.
i think i have a problem with having an overly romatic view of life. it's probably because i don't watch tv and only read books written either before world war 2 or shortly afterwards, but i really do have too much faith in romance. too much faith in the way things could be and not the way things are. i should probably get on that though, the world is a pretty rough place and i treat it like a day at disneyland.
sure why not
"lets be brave" she said.
"do it, you know how you truly feel and denying yourself that is wasting your only chance at life" my heart told me.
"it's only going to cause you and her pain" my brain told me.
"be brave, do what your heart tells you, your logic is all screwed up from bad experiences in the past. you can't live in the past, only in the here and now. the past holds lessons which can be learned from, but should not determine the future, only how you handle what the future holds" i told myself.
living in the past is the biggest mistake i think i could make. sure, life has thrown some really ugly stuff at me, but at the same time, has thrown some really amazing stuff at me when i least expected it. a roll of the dice, a flip of the cards i'll call it. maybe there's a 2 on there, maybe there's an ace. nobody knows, and that's not going to stop me from going there anyways.
"do it, you know how you truly feel and denying yourself that is wasting your only chance at life" my heart told me.
"it's only going to cause you and her pain" my brain told me.
"be brave, do what your heart tells you, your logic is all screwed up from bad experiences in the past. you can't live in the past, only in the here and now. the past holds lessons which can be learned from, but should not determine the future, only how you handle what the future holds" i told myself.
living in the past is the biggest mistake i think i could make. sure, life has thrown some really ugly stuff at me, but at the same time, has thrown some really amazing stuff at me when i least expected it. a roll of the dice, a flip of the cards i'll call it. maybe there's a 2 on there, maybe there's an ace. nobody knows, and that's not going to stop me from going there anyways.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
nuh uh
sometimes i get the feeling that to want what you can't have is the essence of life. i have never met anybody who had everything that they truly wanted. sure, i have all of the material possessions that i want. i have a really nice bike, decent clothes, shoes, a house to live in, lots of friends (not that they're material things, but close enough), and pretty much the only "things" that i ever want and can't have are really expensive things that i would probably just drop and ruin anyways. the problem doesn't lie with material objects, it lies with immaterial objects. things that you can't hold, can't really see. things like aspirations. things like relationships. goals, objectives, even experiences are all things that i want, but can't seem to get enough of.
i want to travel. you could argue that traveling is a material thing, but it's not the physical traveling that i want to do, it's the experiencing of a different way of life. i'm drawn to the idea of leaving this ...culture in america and seeing how other people do it. there's something about the everyday, mundane things in a person's life that they pay little attention to, that are often done differently in other cultures. that's what i want to see. that's what i want to experience.
there are a lot of other things i could really type out, but there are too many of them, and i need to get some sleep so i can ride tomorrow morning (in 6 hours... who needs sleep anyways?).
i want to travel. you could argue that traveling is a material thing, but it's not the physical traveling that i want to do, it's the experiencing of a different way of life. i'm drawn to the idea of leaving this ...culture in america and seeing how other people do it. there's something about the everyday, mundane things in a person's life that they pay little attention to, that are often done differently in other cultures. that's what i want to see. that's what i want to experience.
there are a lot of other things i could really type out, but there are too many of them, and i need to get some sleep so i can ride tomorrow morning (in 6 hours... who needs sleep anyways?).
Friday, July 20, 2007
21
well this weekend is it. the big 21. i'd love to get super excited about a birthday, but really, there's not much going on that gets me pumped to be 21. i still have to go to work every day, i still have to go to bed early every night. in all reality, i don't think i'll be taking any kind of advantage of being 21 until i get back to boulder, when it will definately be taken advantage of. i'm more excited about being able to hang out with my friends without having to be like sorry guys... i can't go out with you tonight... i gotta stay here kinda thing going on. it'll be nice to be able to meet people at the bars (as smarmy as most of those people are, there have to be a few good kids out there somewhere) and be able to go see good shows that i haven't been able to go to. if the polyphonic spree ever make it back to boulder, i'm totally gonna go see them. last time they came, i was not 21 and no amount of schmoozing would convince the lady at the ticket booth to let me in to watch them just for a couple of minutes. maybe sunday night after i go bowling i'll try to find an open liquor store and buy myself a beer or maybe i'll just go out and have one monday after work. i dunno. not too excited. that's the jist of it. time for some scrabble.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
random things that happen at work
today has been a somewhat productive day at work. i got free lunch, which automatically makes it better than any day of the week that i didn't get free lunch (monday and tuesday and probably tomorrow and friday), so that's a good thing. fins and i had a little brain tangle going on when we both emailed each other out of the blue at the exact same time. now, i know that someone is probably sitting there thinking "nah that sort of thing must happen all the time" but it does NOT. i have sent a lot of emails since i started working here, and it hasn't happened once. in fact, i pretty much use outlook like a kid with a broken back would use aim. i even email the guy who is 2 cubes down from me because honestly, i'm just too lazy to get up and have to deal with the possibility of him not being there, running into someone who wants to bug me, or the possibility of actually having to answer questions i don't really know the answer to. if i sit at my desk and write emails, the people on the other end really only get to ask me one question at a time, giving me time to research the answer, and make it seem like i know what i'm doing over here.
lots of random stuff has happened today, and really has been happening since i started here. actually it's probably pretty normal stuff, but in my mind it's really random because i notice it and it makes no sense. for instance, check out this character:
of all the places for him to pop up... he manages to pop up in just the right spot so as to look like he's really really excited about what's going on in that one window. keep in mind that i was pretty excited too because, as you can see, it is not work involved, and therefore was more exciting than excel. being more exciting than excel is not hard to do, and this guy appreciates that just as much as the next guy.
lots of random stuff has happened today, and really has been happening since i started here. actually it's probably pretty normal stuff, but in my mind it's really random because i notice it and it makes no sense. for instance, check out this character:
of all the places for him to pop up... he manages to pop up in just the right spot so as to look like he's really really excited about what's going on in that one window. keep in mind that i was pretty excited too because, as you can see, it is not work involved, and therefore was more exciting than excel. being more exciting than excel is not hard to do, and this guy appreciates that just as much as the next guy.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
in all seriousness
why do extremely poor african people still have children?
take this as a racist comment, whatever you want... i just don't understand it. why, when these people know that they don't have food, medicine, or any proper way to care for their children, do they keep having kids? I know that they are smart people, i know that they are perfectly able to reason this out, so why do they have children knowing full well that they will not be able to have a future? I don't know the numbers, and i don't want to make any up, but i know that there has to be a huge number of African children who starve to death every day because of all of the famine that has been going on there. If anybody has any insight (or... if anybody even reads this at all) let me know. I'm honestly curious and not just trying to say "well look how much they suck, they have kids even though they're starving themselves." i really do want to know why. it could be a huge cultural chasm that i can't cross until i understand more about what goes on over there. my sister has been to Africa... maybe she knows.
take this as a racist comment, whatever you want... i just don't understand it. why, when these people know that they don't have food, medicine, or any proper way to care for their children, do they keep having kids? I know that they are smart people, i know that they are perfectly able to reason this out, so why do they have children knowing full well that they will not be able to have a future? I don't know the numbers, and i don't want to make any up, but i know that there has to be a huge number of African children who starve to death every day because of all of the famine that has been going on there. If anybody has any insight (or... if anybody even reads this at all) let me know. I'm honestly curious and not just trying to say "well look how much they suck, they have kids even though they're starving themselves." i really do want to know why. it could be a huge cultural chasm that i can't cross until i understand more about what goes on over there. my sister has been to Africa... maybe she knows.
you probably don't want to read this one
3 years of engineering school, countless nights staying up way too late to study, sleeping in the engineering center, waking up early to finish homework before class, working for 25+ hours on projects for class, not getting nearly enough sleep, food, or free time and it all culminates in me sitting here in a cubicle writing in this blog, drawing pictures of strange 3d shapes on a piece of paper. Is this what all of my hard work was good for? I know i bitch and whine a lot about this job, but i feel like if i write one big, horrific, tell all thing about why i hate my job, maybe it'll be out of my system and i can move on and get past the next 5 weeks with as little social and emotional damage as possible. seriously. i turned down an internship at BNSF railroad, which would have had me possibly inspecting rail yards, locomotives, and doing other actual work to come here. i spent about $800 on plane tickets to move out here, had to put my stuff in storage, and left all but one or two friends to move here this summer. 7 weeks ago i moved here, started this job, and have nothing to show for it. i was supposed to be here a week earlier, but due to some... unexpected circumstances, i ended up getting here a week late and i "missed" my opportunity to work on a real exciting project. because of that, the higher ups here decided that i was no longer going to work on that project (for reasons i can't possibly understand) and was instead going to be assigned to another manager who didn't have anything for me to do. i think what really happened was that they said "hey, we've got an intern coming in to work for you" and he dug around through some old files and found a couple things that needed to be updated, but not badly enough where anyone who already worked here would have done it. In short, had i not even showed up here to work this summer, none of the things that i've done would have ever gotten done. it's like that stain on the carpet underneath the couch. you could move the couch, get out the scrub brush and some chemicals, and get rid of the stain. instead of spending the time to do that, you decide to do something more important for about 5 years and neglect the stain knowing that you probably will never move that couch and nobody will ever see the stain. there were a few databases that were a little bit out of date, and everybody has more important stuff to do, so they just didn't update them for 5 years. the numbers kept getting worse, but it wasn't a big enough deal to warrant putting someone on the task of figuring out why. then they got an intern. an intern who knows nothing about how multi-billion dollar corporations work, disagrees with outsourcing important jobs, and doesn't know anyone who works here, and you hand him one spreadsheet, tell him the numbers aren't working out, and go back to doing your job. for 7 weeks.
as for what i've done this summer, i think i can think of two actual pieces of progress. i fixed one spreadsheet that took about 5 weeks of harassing, bothering, and otherwise chasing around various engineers and asking them for input. i got handed several contacts in thailand, malaysia, and here in california who might know something about the numbers i'm looking for, but after asking them, got passed off to even more engineers in asia who passed me off to even more people because either they have NO idea what i'm talking about (which was pretty much verbatim speculation from my boss who, i later found out was really just spitballing with me), or they don't have the information. my problem at this point was that i had 1 job to do, and that was to find these numbers and fix this spreadsheet. the people i was bugging had about 100 jobs to do, and the job that involved humoring the summer intern took a back seat way more often than not. after 5 weeks of chasing these people around and getting in their hair as much as possible, i finally fixed that problem, and was looking forward to maybe getting put on a current project where i would get to make some actual decisions and do something other than hump a spreadsheet for 9 hours a day, make phone calls to people who don't know what i want (and why i would even want such information, even after an explanation), which brings me to my current project
after finishing that project, my boss said ok good now that you're done with that, we have another issue with some numbers that aren't coming out right. why is it that it took 3-5 years of getting bad numbers that they decided to actually fix these problems? so i got about 8 different products to look at, 8 different engineers who are busy and have no time for me, and another smorgasbord of spreadsheets to sift through, and am expected to do almost the exact same thing that i did in the last project. this time, however, instead of having just a few people to chase around, i have 8 different engineers who are busy, so they pass me off to other engineers who are busy. when i ask them for information, i get the feeling that they humor me by sending me little emails and spreadsheets similar to the ones i asked for, but aren't actually the ones that i asked for. then when i ask them for what i really need, they either don't have it, or they give me the emails of 4 people in china who might have it, and if they don't, then it got lost because so and so changed departments 6 months ago and they don't know where he or she went.
at this point, on this project, i've only made 1 step of progress, have emailed 50 different people looking for the information i need, just keep getting answers of "yeah, that's not how we do that" or "this is how this process is done... we did it different this time" or "i don't really understand what you're looking for, but i don't think we have it", and am ready to walk out of here, quit this job, and sit on the beach for the rest of the summer. sitting alone at my desk finding ways to pass the time is a waste of my life.
there. i'm done. i turn 21 in 2 weeks, move back to boulder in 5, and hopefully i won't quit before then.
as for what i've done this summer, i think i can think of two actual pieces of progress. i fixed one spreadsheet that took about 5 weeks of harassing, bothering, and otherwise chasing around various engineers and asking them for input. i got handed several contacts in thailand, malaysia, and here in california who might know something about the numbers i'm looking for, but after asking them, got passed off to even more engineers in asia who passed me off to even more people because either they have NO idea what i'm talking about (which was pretty much verbatim speculation from my boss who, i later found out was really just spitballing with me), or they don't have the information. my problem at this point was that i had 1 job to do, and that was to find these numbers and fix this spreadsheet. the people i was bugging had about 100 jobs to do, and the job that involved humoring the summer intern took a back seat way more often than not. after 5 weeks of chasing these people around and getting in their hair as much as possible, i finally fixed that problem, and was looking forward to maybe getting put on a current project where i would get to make some actual decisions and do something other than hump a spreadsheet for 9 hours a day, make phone calls to people who don't know what i want (and why i would even want such information, even after an explanation), which brings me to my current project
after finishing that project, my boss said ok good now that you're done with that, we have another issue with some numbers that aren't coming out right. why is it that it took 3-5 years of getting bad numbers that they decided to actually fix these problems? so i got about 8 different products to look at, 8 different engineers who are busy and have no time for me, and another smorgasbord of spreadsheets to sift through, and am expected to do almost the exact same thing that i did in the last project. this time, however, instead of having just a few people to chase around, i have 8 different engineers who are busy, so they pass me off to other engineers who are busy. when i ask them for information, i get the feeling that they humor me by sending me little emails and spreadsheets similar to the ones i asked for, but aren't actually the ones that i asked for. then when i ask them for what i really need, they either don't have it, or they give me the emails of 4 people in china who might have it, and if they don't, then it got lost because so and so changed departments 6 months ago and they don't know where he or she went.
at this point, on this project, i've only made 1 step of progress, have emailed 50 different people looking for the information i need, just keep getting answers of "yeah, that's not how we do that" or "this is how this process is done... we did it different this time" or "i don't really understand what you're looking for, but i don't think we have it", and am ready to walk out of here, quit this job, and sit on the beach for the rest of the summer. sitting alone at my desk finding ways to pass the time is a waste of my life.
there. i'm done. i turn 21 in 2 weeks, move back to boulder in 5, and hopefully i won't quit before then.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
the date buzz
so everyone has been making a pretty big deal out of the july 7th 2007 (7/7/07) date thing and i decided to do a little thinking about this.
a date which has the same month, day, and year has happened in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and will happen until 2012, when the months can no longer keep up with the year. 1/1/01, 2/2/02, 3/3/03, etc. until 12/12/12. then, we'll have to wait 988 years to go nuts again, when the date is january 1st, 3001. since i'll be dead by then, i guess i should enjoy these dates as much as... possible? how do you go about enjoying them? celebrating them? i guess it is pretty neat that since a "generation" spans about 40 years or so, the last time this happened would have been in the year 1012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1012 which would have been about 25 or so generations ago.
that's about all i've got for now.
a date which has the same month, day, and year has happened in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and will happen until 2012, when the months can no longer keep up with the year. 1/1/01, 2/2/02, 3/3/03, etc. until 12/12/12. then, we'll have to wait 988 years to go nuts again, when the date is january 1st, 3001. since i'll be dead by then, i guess i should enjoy these dates as much as... possible? how do you go about enjoying them? celebrating them? i guess it is pretty neat that since a "generation" spans about 40 years or so, the last time this happened would have been in the year 1012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1012 which would have been about 25 or so generations ago.
that's about all i've got for now.
a real blog
so it's time for a real blog for real musings/rants/etc. something more substantial than a xanga... something a little bit more permanent and perhaps a little more serious or credible. i can't write every day, but i'm guessing that these will often mirror (at least fairly closely) the journal i keep in real life. maybe a little less personal, but there's a whole lot of good stuff that goes in there that nobody ends up reading, and won't at least until i die. so here's to something new to do to kill time at work, in class, or any other time i feel like someone might possibly want to read what ran through my mind once or twice during the day.
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