People might know that I am a huge baseball fan. I am known as an intellectual baseball fan. I enjoy looking over the finer parts of the sport. Pitching is something that everyone talks about, but very few people can explain. Here is a little information about how and why breaking pitches break. The next time someone asks if a curve ball really curves or not, tell them it only matters if you can hit the curve ball.
One of the guys in my office has recently tipped me off to his cover song website. I was really happy when I saw this site. I used to be the king of cover songs when I was in college. I would end every fall semester with a four hour radio show of nothing buy covers. By my senior year I could only play about 10% of the covers I had found.
I have nowhere near the record collection I used to have in college. A lot of those cover songs are never to be seen again. I am going to make a CD of songs for this web site. I might have enough songs to get my own section on the site. That is one of my projects for this weekend.
It is Christmas time and I have been seeing people post links to their Amazon Wishlists. Whenever I see someone post their wishlist, I look at it if I know the person or not. I am hoping that I can find something out about these people by looking at there wishlist. I am wondering what these people might reveal to me.
Most of the time I really do not get any more idea about them. I see what books they like. I usually think that I should read some of these books. I really want to see what Amazon thinks about these people. I want to see their Amazon Recommendations. When I have a slow moment at work I go and edit my Amazon Recommendations. I am just fascinated by the engine that runs those recommendations.
Last night I slept for about 10 hours, watched about 20 minutes worth of pro wrestling, and wrote for a few hours. On paper that almost sounds like the perfect evening.
I found an amusing article on what not to do at work parties. I found the article to be amusing. The long and short of the article is, be yourself but be the work version of yourself. I always find these things to be a little bit funny.
I have not done anything really embarrassing at a work party. We have had more then a few work parties at TiVo. Before TiVo, I never had the chance to make a fool of myself. All of my old jobs were cash bar places. I worked at one place that never severed liquor at business functions. Most of the other places did not have a party atmosphere.
I have been to more then one TiVo party. I have gotten tipsy at a couple of parties, but I have not gotten embarrassingly drunk. Most of the time I have to drive home, so I do not get the chance to drink too much. I am not the drinker I used to be. Even when I want to get drunk, it seems hard for me to loose control enough to really drink. There is part of me that thinks I am too old to drink like that anymore.
I sometimes have a dark side when I drink. If I find myself drinking for the wrong reasons, it can start to get ugly. The last time I remember getting this kind of ugly drunk was at my cousin's wedding. If I drink because no one is talking to me or I feel that I do not fit in, this is when I start to become an ugly. I basally drinking because of my own unhappiness. This is never a good thing.
There was a party, the DTV launch party where I found myself going down this road. I had started to drink at the party. I could not find any clique to hand out with at the party. TiVo can be really cliquish at times. I found myself being angry and drinking. I had to pull back because I was afraid what would happen. I have been known to tell people to "screw off" when I am this way. I know this could have hurt me.
I will have to remember the guidelines from this web site the next time I go to a TiVo party. I am going to miss the luncheon. I wonder when the next big TiVo party will be after this.
Under the category of things I know nothing about, how to buy a house is high on that list. I saw this article on buying a house. After reading the article I still do not feel that I know anything about buying a house. I know that I need to pay closer attention to my credit. I need to reduce the amount of debt and credit I am carrying. Both of these things would be a good idea.
Buying a house seems like such a big idea to me right now. I do not see how I would be able to do it without help from an outside source. Maybe my lack of understanding is because I feel that I am so far away from it. I put it to the back of my mind because I feel it is something I will not be able to afford. I should work toward understanding these things. I need to get out of the renting business.
My friend Stephen, who I had a dream about a few weeks ago, showed me a web log he did from his first two weeks at TiVo. It is interesting to read. He talks mostly about how busy he is. He started to work a TiVo just weeks before the product was released. As long as I have known Stephen, he has worked 60 hour weeks. Those were the short weeks.
I wonder if anyone else I work with have web logs. This is a hard question to ask people. There seems to be a line between work lives and private lives. There are very few people who I have been able to step over that line with. You can find out things about people, but only in a work conversation way. I have no idea how to find this out about most of them. I tell a lot of people I have a web log, but most of the just look blankly at me.
Stephen comment was "I read a lot of your site. I always thought there was an awful lot going on in your head that you didn't share, and felt that you should have an outlet. Now I know that you do have an outlet, and it's good work. Reading about your perspective on the layoff was very interesting. You're right about a lot of things, particularly about how you're regarded.
The comment is interesting to me. The line about "awful lot going on in your head that you didn't share" really strikes me. This is a level of perception that I cannot gage. Most of the time I fell that I wear my life on my sleeve. I guess people can see me, but not see through me.
I have been fighting off a cold this week. That means that I have been having fever dream. I dream hard when I am sick. I usually have dreams that I cannot explain to anyone. They do not even make sense to me. I had more then one dream last night, but only one is worth writing about.
It was a Star Wars Dream. I was with the Rebellion. We had just taken over a Empire troop transport. People were still making plans how we were going to use it. I am not clear about what the plans might be. I know that it was huge victory that we had taken over the transport. A lot of people that I work with where on the transport. Most of the call center was part of the Rebellion. Someone said that we should use the transport to sneak onto the Death Star.
Everyone that I heard sounded so arrogant. It was like they were not taking the Empire seriously. This really turned me off. I went around to explore the ship. It had a lot of gear on it. There were ground transports, weapons, uniforms, and other types of gear. We had really struck gold with this transport. I decided to spend my time looking around the ship. There was this strange smell coming out of one of the rooms. I found that a lot of people were getting high on some kind of interstellar weed. I asked them if they thought it was a bad idea. They said no. I told them that the Empire might attack us at any time. They thought I was taking this a little too seriously. I left that room right away.
There were these pre-build houses on the ship. It was almost like housing for the Storm Troopers. I was climbing around on these houses. I walk on my hands in a lot of dreams. I was walking on the roofs of these houses on my hands. I was just jumping from rooftop to rooftop. While I was doing this there were people below me running around. I looked down to see that Storm Troopers had boarded the ship and started to take it back. I tried to decide what to do. I knew I was out numbered, so I decided to surrendered.
All of the sudden I was in Don's office. I was doing a handstand on a device. He told me that the device was a project his team was working on. It would take dreams and convert them straight into C code. He told me that I was making great faces during the dream. The rest of his team laughed when he said that. I had just woke up from the Star Wars dream into another dream. I walked around Don's office and asked him about the device.
A few minutes later woke out of the second dream. That was when I realized that it was all a dream and I was not in Don's office. The same thing happened me a couple more times last night. I would go from one dream and wake up in Don's office. It might have happened five or six times last night. It is a new level of fever dream for me.
I went to the dentist today and it was hard. I am currently fighting off a cold. I took a sick day on Monday, but I am still sick today. My nose is running and my throat is raw. The only way to keep from coughing is to suck on cough drops. It was not a fun day to go to the dentist. I had to go because I already canceled this visit once. It was supposed to be the day of the last round of layoffs at work.
I, like most people, hate going to the dentist. It is not the pain that gets to me. It is not the soreness after the visit that bothers me. It is the idea of people rooting around in my mouth that has always bothered me. It is the feeling of fingers poking and prodding inside of my mouth. It is my mouth and other people fingers do not belong there.
The last couple times I have been to the dentist I been interested by the experience of being in the chair. I am numb and the dentist has his fingers in my mouth. He is scraping on my teeth with drills, sonic cleaners and other devices I cannot fathom. I close my eyes and feel what is happening. I have to close my eyes. If I look at the dentist and his assistant it is too much for me.
I sit there, listening to and feeling what the dentist is doing in my month. Time moves in all kind of screwed up ways. it will take forever for him to just to get done with one tooth. The next thing I know we are almost done. He is talking the whole time. I am only listening with that automatic part of my brain. The rest of my brain is trying to stay calm.
The sound is almost as bad as the feeling. It is loud and there is nothing I can do to turn down the volume. I know there is less pain because of the sonic tools, but it is still strange. I listen and feel him do each tooth. It takes endurance for me to put up with it all.
When I go to the dentist I am always on the verge of freaking out. I am always on the edge. There is part of me that wants to run out of the office screaming. After the dentist starts working on me I have to clear my throat several times. Most of the time I just need to have the dentist out of my mouth until I can calm myself down again.
I hate all of these things, but I know I just cannot bail in the middle of an appointment. I need to get the work finished. As much as I hate going now, I will hate it more if I need a root canal. Maybe focusing on these things is what gives me the strength to do it.
Today a friend of mine asked me what I thought about the American Man they found fighting for the Taliban. My answer is that I am surprised that they have found so few. I would expect that there are more Americans who have taken up their cause.
When I look at America, I can see why it is easy for some people to get lost. It is easy for me to see why some people might be disenchanted with the life that Americans live. There is search for values and meaning that American Culture seems to laugh at. Just look at the ways that the people from his old neighborhood view him. It is easy for me to see why someone will look for answers in other places.
For the last couple of years I have seen how people can be radicalized and moved away from American society. I say that they can be radicalized because it is easy to make the case that the only change is going to come from revolution. I think that radicalized is a better term then brainwashed. I think that when people think about brainwashed, they see someone is a zombie or not thinking. I think these people have clear value systems. They are just not the value system that most Americans have.
There are lots of places where people can make arguments against American Society. Unless we do something to see these places and fix them who knows what might happen. I think the first place where American is foreign policy. We say that we are the defenders of democracy, but we will let dictates stand if they are friendly to our policy. How many crimes have CIA carried out in our name? How did we let Afghanistan fall into turmoil after they fought a proxy war for us? I can rationalize these things, but it is easy to understand why people in many parts of the world think they are wrong.
The second weakness it our government. There is an old saying that the appearance of a conflict of interest is as bad as a conflict of interest itself. If our government is not a series conflicts of interests, it at least appears that way. People are feeling more and more disconnected from the government all the time. I think it would be easy to exploit that in the mind of many. American Government should stand on the values of great men. Many times it seems it stands on the values of the business world.
The third and maybe greatest weakness is American Consumer Society. The symbols of American Consumer Society are SUVs and Cell Phones. There is not one image that a business will not use to try to sell a product. There is not one product that Americans are not clamoring to buy. I do not want to just blame business for this. I feel that almost every American has fallen into this trap. We buy things to make our lives more fashionable. We are sold lifestyles, beauty, and a sense that we are good people. We tell our daughters that they are not beautiful unless we are perfect, our sons that they have to own everything and ourselves that if you are not having lots of sex you are a loser. We dress our kids in Nikes, hour homes in Ikea, and our lives in consumer debt. We do all these things while schools are falling apart and homeless people sleep in the streets.
I see American life as a series of trade offs. I know that our government is not perfect, but neither is anyone else's. I know that America had to do things in its own interest. I know that things all over the world are not perfect, but they could be worse. I know that people have to solve their own problems. Handouts from the government will only make things worse. I can also see how these facts can be used to turn people away from America.
This might not be the most coherent rant in the world, but it is late and I was tired of these things before I even sat down to write it.
For all you Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans out there, here is the perfect reason to buy the Sixth Season when it come out on DVD. It looks like the sex scene between Spike and Buffy was a little too hot for TV. We can expect it on the DVD. Amazon is currently taking orders for the first season on DVD. I did not realize that the first season was only 12 episodes long.
I took a sick day today. I felt like crap most of the weekend. Today I was running fever and was light-headed. I was in no condition to go to work. Taking a sick day is always a hard thing. My current boss never takes sick days. He is the type of person who always seems to be in the office. I cannot remember the last time he took a sick day.
I am not saying that I am the kind of person that takes a lot of sick days. The last sick day I have take was over the summer. I am still worried. I think people will say bad things about me if I take sick days. I think they might think that I am not dedicated. I will not go into work when I start to get sick. My hope is that a day of sleep will keep me from getting any sicker. It will have to play out over the rest of this week.
I was shopping on Amazon the other day and I saw the new Barbie Video Game. I am not sure about everyone else, but I find it strange that Barbie has a Secret Agent Video game. It just does not seem to fit the other games in the Barbie catalog. I find a huge gap between, Barbie Pet Rescuer and Barbie Secret Agent. I know the secret agent game is to cash in on Spy Kids. It is just an odd thing to see.
PS. I to have an odd fixation on well developed imagery worlds.
