school

so it's been a while since i've written anything new. let me explain.

i got into boulder on sunday at about 1ish, did a little grocery shopping, rented a uhaul and moved a mountain of boxes into my room. sunday night, went out and got back to my apartment at 1ish. monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, and today i've had band camp from 9am until 6ish, then dinner and social stuff or going out until 1ish. no time to move in, no time to do anything. also, i'm broke as they come, and going out doesn't help that at all.

so there. maybe once school starts i can start making wild and fairly inaccurate observations about life and writing them in here.

some of the sweetest words

some of the sweetest sounding words ever spoken to me were just uttered.

i was sitting at my desk reading some very unimportant news articles when another intern came bursting into my cube, whence upon these words were spoken: "free food, let's go." We left my cube in a flash. Curious as to the source of such priveledged information, i quizzed the other intern briefly only to discover that his superior had been in a meeting-of-sorts and had left some food behind. we briskly raced forth, dodging the occasional pedestrian and copy machine user in order to get to the source of said wonder before anyone else could have learned of such heathen treasures. like ponce de leon closing quickly in on the fabled fountain of youth, everything slowed almost to a halt; our frantic manouvers through the throng of disguntled employees seemed more like a ballet than a chaotic sprint towards some material lust, more like a slow, romantic evening waltz than a pack of dogs running white-hot after a fat rabbit. we entered the meeting room and closed the door behind us, sealing out the woes and ways of this damn-ed world, and stood breathlessly in the wonder and awe of the sight of a free breakfast. a smorgasbord fit for king henry himself was laid out before us in a meticulous and very baroque fashion. rows upon rows of gleaming sterno oven trays filled with a cornucopia of french toast triangles, crusty eggs, and slick looking sausage patties danced in front of our eyes like children dancing about a may pole. after a few moments of revered silence, i gained my breath back and searched the table for the silverware and paper plates, then proceeded to fill my plate, almost the the point of failure of the plate itself with several triangles of holy french toast, a few strips of glistening, crisp bacon, and whatever amount of eggs i could forcefully remove from the bottom of the egg pan. it was then that i noticed a small gilded bowl of yoghurt and an accompanying plate of granola, whereupon i dollupped a healthy serving of yoghurt and granola upon another, smaller plate. i was getting ready to race back to my desk to indulge in as many of the deadly sins as would this bounty support when, out of the corner of a tear filled eye, i saw intruders. two women had entered our temple of free food unannounced and commenced to lament about "how difficult it is to be on a diet when there's free food all the time" and how "the bacon [looked] 'nasty'." how foolish were these women not to take full advantage of free food without first demonizing it! at this point, i felt as though our stay in this holy place had been without blemish and complete and it was time for a hasty departure. back out into the real world we pushed on, whereupon coworkers looked at our plates laden with a fool's demise with eyes searching, wanting to know the source. wary to divulge such valuable information, we pressed on back through the throngs of business back to our desks. i sit here now, fully content, and completely sick, content with our pillage like a viking crew returning to their boats with sacks full of gold, spices, and jewels, ready to embrace their conquests with drink and folly. i, too, will celebrate this conquest by returning to reading unimportant news articles, while every so often noticing the smell of pancake sirrup wafting out of my trash can. i leave you, the reader, with this post-conquest correspondence:

To: Poon, Jackie
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:29 AM
From: Walter, Jimmy
Subject:

I have had my fill of adventure for the morning. That will have to be reserved until after lunch.

_____________________________________________
From: Poon, Jackie
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:27 AM
To: Walter, Jimmy
Subject:

Fellow intern, you have now accomplished your first goal of finding quality free food…..I now challenge you to find out where the mystery door is located before your internship ends……bwahahahaha

buggin me

other than what i've been doing since i woke up this morning, today has been a good day. however, there were a few small things that stood out and really just bugged me today:

-i went to bed with pants on and woke up without pants on, making turning my alarm off (which is in the next room to mine to keep me from going back to sleep instantly) very complicated
-as i was walking to the bathroom, i saw somebody take the last piece of cake from a birthday cake, look around to make sure nobody saw him, and walk away. THAT'S MY JOB! how dare somebody go around the office looking for free food instead of doing work! i need to be way more vigilant in my free food ventures unless i want to get walked all over by other scavengers. their timing may be better than mine, but my evasion skills are so finely honed after this summer that they don't stand a chance.
-i was typing a text message with the word "consequences" in it, which my phone didn't have in it's automatic memory thing. that's a long word to try to type in a cell phone, and i spelled it wrong a few times which made it take even longer. then later on i was typing another text message and one of the word suggestions that came up was "y2k". great. it's 2007. when's the last time anybody mentioned y2k? 7 years ago? yeah. when's the last time somebody used the word "consequences"? probably in the time it took me to type this sentance. sony needs to get on that.
-i called travelocity because they messed up my online reservation thing for my flight back to colorado on sunday only to have the phone answered by an indian guy who, i swear, slipped a few sentances in there in his own language just to make me mad. after every single thing he said to me, i had to say "excuse me" or "can you please repeat that, it's very hard to understand you" or something to that effect. every. 30. seconds. then when he asked me for my email address and he was repeating it back to me, he tried using the letters in words so that i could understand what he was saying more clearly, but it came off more like this:
"ok, your emayyl addresh ish jeemeey.wohta@mahtew.cawm spelled j as in jawg, i as in (i think he said ink, no idea), dobl m as in meersh (i don't know what that is either), y as in yesh dawt w as in weg (again, huh?), a as in alpha (i got that one down), l as in lamb (i think), t as in teeth, e as in eggwash (wtf is eggwash??), r as in randy"... and it went on smoothly from there. if you're working for a big company and you need to hire people to answer your phones here in america, please, PLEASE make sure that they at least sound like an american. i love other cultures, i really do. i just don't want to have to embrace your accent as i'm trying to figure out why my $700 plane ticket suddenly disappeared from your website, and you're sitting there trying to repeat "is there anything else i can do for you today" 4 or 5 times as i get more and more frustrated with you.
-it isn't 5 o clock yet.

hopefully things will look up, i know i have dinner to look forward to. and a bike ride. yep.

ambiguous high fives and hand shakes

i hate ambiguous high fives and hand shakes. i definately just experienced an ambiguous high five situation which ended in some sort of awkward reaching motion with no closure whatsoever. maybe that's what it was meant to be... just kind of a reaching out that leaves you... wanting more? maybe? i dunno. anyways, i tend to think of myself as a pretty consistent high fiver and hand shaker. i don't really tend to go for the fancy hand shake where you bring them in and pat them on the back, unless i can tell that's what they're going for. like if you haven't seen someone in a really long time, that one's ok. i prefer to go for the straight up, hand out in front of you hand shake. official style. i also don't ever seem to get the hint that when we shake hands, right afterwards, we're going to slide hands then either snap, "pound it", or whatever. i just don't get it. i'm including a handy little guide to my hand shakes/high fives in case you encounter me and i throw you for a loop, you'll know what to do. and yes, i am this bored.

prepare to be offended

so yesterday i made another connection. as i was wandering around the office trying to kill time (and find free food), i noticed a very feminine smell that smelled... well... great. i then noticed a fairly large lady around the next corner who must have walked past and left her scent for me to walk through.

then, in the same day, i was walking around the office again and ended up following a larger lady who really smelled just awesome. it smelled like i could've been skipping through a meadow of flowers and fruit trees. seriously. so anyways, that led me to do a little bit of thinking about women and smell, and i came up with this handy chart.

if you're one of those people who think that being fat is a sensitive topic, or that somebody's perception of body size is just rude and/or demeaning, i'll leave it at this graph. if you're not, and you know how rediculous i am and how i really don't mean anything by what i type here, read on. and by the way, i used to be a fat kid. a smelly fat kid. i'm allowed.

now, a little explanation. the scale runs from 0 (horrible smelling) to 10 (makes my mouth water). the smallest women, indicated on the "small" side of the graph, usually smell just alright. this is probably due to the fact that they shower like the rest of us, and don't tend to misuse or over-apply perfume because they're probably pretty alright looking and can attract attention without the use of rediculous perfume. we get a little dip while marching up on the size axis, and this is most likely due to the fact that just-alright looking girls a. are a little bit less than "average" size and b. usually don't take very good care of themselves due to the fact that even with some help from perfume, they still are gonna be just mediocre. the next little dip we see is in the "average" range. this is due heavily to the presence of tomboys in this are. tomboys are the girls who think they are boys, and tend to dress a lot like them with baggy pants, big shirts, backwards caps, and overly pronounced moustaches. what they don't know is that while they look like guys (sometimes causing me great confusion), they also smell like a guy. which is to say... horrible. moving on. here we can see quantitative graphical evidence which supports my theory discovered by walking around the office yesterday that girls who fall just above and beyond "average" tend to smell the best. why? i don't really know. maybe it's the missing piece of the puzzle to their attractiveness, maybe they think that if they smell good, we'll ignore the fact that they're a little larger. i couldn't care less about a girl's size, really, but there's just somethign about obnoxious perfume that makes me sneeze. the scent peaks somewhere around
middle-aged, stopped excersizing when i got married, work in an office lady. from there, there is a sharp dive towards the negative, probably stemming from b.o., homelessness, or mayonaise. there you have it. my findings. i could fit this curve with another equation, but i'm way too lazy and smell a little bit too bad because of my laziness to care.

another day in my life

sit down and let me give you a run down of how a productive day of work should look. i know there are a lot of theories out there about "getting things done," "going to meetings," and even crazy things like "answering emails," but i assure you these are all a hoax. that's what the man wants you to do. in order to be truly productive in the workplace, you really need to just open your mind to the endless possibilities of staring blankly at people until they think of something for you to do to get you to leave them alone. as a prime example, here's a little rundown of my day today. call it a waste of time, call it irresponsible... call it what you will but i call it an opportunity to make sure everybody i work with knows that i don't have anything to do and am proud of it. it's like wearing two different socks to school in 3rd grade, and instead of being embarrassed about it, telling all of your friends about how cool it is until they believe you.

7:50am - arrived at my desk, hit the power button on my computer. knowing full well that my computer takes over 15 minutes to actually start up, i walked one lap of my floor, rinsed out an old styrofoam cup on my desk, made some tea, carved my name into barbie's leg with a push-pin, drank my tea, then turned on the monitor.

8:10am - opened up internet explorer and read every scrap of news i could find. digg, latimes.com, buffalonews.com, theonion.com. if it says news on it, i probably read it.

8:45am - walked another lap of my floor scouting for free food. free food has become very hard to identify. i think that people are on to me. normally, i would dismiss a plate of cookies as unwanted if i could detect that they were in a place where there was a meeting where people left, help myself to as many as i could carry, and bring them back to my desk. this morning i ran across a plate of brownies sitting on a small table by a display case. what really threw me off were the number of people sitting at their desks in the area. normally, these are the kind of people who spend all day in meetings, and since they were all at their desk, i thought that they might have gotten the brownies so they could work at their desks and still have bad food nearby. there was also the factor of the small table where they were sitting. had they been sitting around the table eating and having a meeting and just stepped away for a moment? surely if i took all of their brownies and they got back, they would follow my crumb trail to my desk and fire me on the spot. this is when i invented the 10 minute rule. i decided that if i spot some loose food, i can leave it be, come back in 10 minutes, and if it still looks unwanted, it's fair game. nobody in their right mind would leave brownies/cookies/bags of chips laying around for over 10 minutes unattended.

9:30am - started drawing pictures for a little "side project" i'm working on. i think my boss ran out of stuff for me to do, came up with a concept, and asked me to further the concept. i get the distinct feeling that as soon as i clean up my desk, these drawings and my concept will be thrown away with all of the candy wrappers they find underneath my computer.

11:30am - lunchtime.

12:15pm - done with lunch, back to the desk to watch some angry beavers episodes c/o tv-links.co.uk. seriously this is going to be my new best friend on slow days of work. while i was watching these, i drew some more pictures, played with some pennies, and took another lap of the office to see if there was any work for me to do... no luck.

2:00pm - decided that it was time for a tour of one of the other buildings, called up another intern working there, and hung around her building for a while. now, when i say that i have to get creative at wasting time, i mean that i have to get creative. this other building which houses most of the electronic games design people has an entire room. yes, an entire room devoted to video games. there is a giant leather couch, lots of squishy things to sit on, a plasma hdtv, ps3, wii, xbox360, ps2, and an hd-dvd player. and a surround sound system. i don't get any work done here, but whatever scrap of work that i do get done, simply would not get done. i don't think i would even leave the room to go to the bathroom if we had one of those in my building.

3:30pm - walked around the toy store, went to the little mailroom, discovered that the stamp machine gives "change" in 1c stamps. i now have more 1c stamps than i know what to do with... i'll probably stick one to barbie and see if the folks at the post office are kind enough to mail her to sandy clause.

4:00pm - hung around some tables where people sometimes set up hot wheels tracks or other toys to "test" them and make sure that everything works, asked about a cool looking track, and got to play with it for a half hour.

4:30pm - got an email about my intern exit interview, started preparing ways to kindly say that i hated every minute of working here because it would have been more exciting to show up to 9 hours of chinese water torture every day for 3 months than it was to work here. i'm still working on the words for that...

and now, i'm typing this thing, thinking about how much time i can spend cleaning my desk tomorrow (if i do it right, possibly the entire day) and wondering if it is still hot out and how much i want to sit on the beach this entire weekend and do nothing.

i also found this article about napping at work, which really sums up everything i've thought about when daring to nap at work. it really is dangerous, but if you plan it right, nobody knows the difference. headphones are key too, you can easily pretend to be listening to music so loud that you don't notice your boss behind you asking you how the spreadsheet is coming until they tap you on the shoulder.
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Lots of people want to take naps at work. This is very dangerous and should only be attempted by the most seasoned napper. No matter how many news magazines do stories on how taking naps improve employee performance in other countries, you will never be paid to sleep here in the U.S of A. The USA work ethic hates sleep, even the good “8 hours a night” kind. If you must take a nap you might try this idea from the “Nap Play Book”. Nap #643 -- Fill a coffee mug. Find a low traffic area in the office and spill the contents of the mug on the floor. Lay down on the floor face first with your coffee mug laying on the spill. The purpose is to make it look like you fell, passed out or tripped on something. After you place yourself in position, go to sleep. If someone finds you, they’ll rush to your aide. Have an excuse ready. They’ll think you are hurt or sick, but don’t let them send you home. You don’t want to eat up sick leave, that’s your personal time. Never repeat this exercise in the same location and don’t do it too often. This nap will be less effective if you snore. If you snore while you sleep it’s tougher to pass off sleep as unconsciousness. (Naps can buy you any where from 10 minutes to several hours depending on where you take the nap)