Welcome to Sad Salvation. Day by day by day by day ... this is my attempt to make sense of the world.

Current | Archives

Saturday, February 23, 2002

Maintenance

I know that one of my weaknesses is keeping things up to date. I am good at keeping things I do everyday up to day. I do have problems with my bills, check book, or anything that is day to day. Things that are not important everyday are hard for me. This is both in the electronic world and in the real world.

I was just looking at my PDA. I had the e-mail address of a woman I met at a wedding in October. I sent her a message and she never responded. That address is still on my PDA. I should have deleted months ago, but I did not. I wonder what keeps me from being good at these things.

Labels: email, maintenance, PDA, self

- Rich, 2:52 PM |

Friday Five

I know it is saturday, but give me a break every once in a while.

1. Hey, baby, what's your sign? Do you think it fits you pretty well? Gemini, I do not pay attention to it, but I have been two people most of my life.

2. What's the worst birthday gift you've ever received? A gift certificate to a story that only sold old man clothing.

3. What's the best birthday gift you've ever received? This is a hard question to answer. Most of my great gifts I have gotten at times other then my birthday. I was once given a cup holder for my car. It was the most useful birthday present I have ever received.

4. What's the best way you've celebrated your birthday thus far? In my early 20s my parents would go out of town around my birthday. It would be my sisters and I for my birthday. Those were always really fun. We joked around and laughed a lot.

5. What are your plans for this weekend? Jason convinced me to buy some card for the Lord Of The Rings game. I will play that game. Just waiting for the cable guy right now.

- Rich, 11:05 AM |

Friday, February 22, 2002

Bad Luck

Some days it is the big thinks that scare you and the little thinks that do you in. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family.

Thank Shebear for me knowing this.

- Rich, 11:18 PM |

Light and Dark

Last night was the first time this year it has been light when I left work. This makes me happy. I hate going home in the dark. I want to be able to leave work and have at least some sunlight left over.

By the time I got to my apartment it was no longer light. It was full night time and all the street lights where on. It will not be too long before it is still light when I get back to my apartment. That means I can break out my bike on week nights. I want to ride my bike more often, but San Jose is not a bike friendly town. Longer days will help me out.

- Rich, 11:11 PM |

Enron and Understanding

I drove around for an extra hour last night listening to NPR. My local station was playing a Special Episode of Marketplace, Blind Trust: What Enron Says About America. It was a good special about a complex story. It was worth me wasting an extra hour in the car.

When Enron first fell apart a lot of people thought the company feel apart just because of the business model. They thought that the company just had a bad business plan. Then people talked like everyone in the company was part of the scam to rip people off. Now people talk like only a few people defrauded the whole company. It is a little hard what to believe.

This episode of Marketplace does not retrace the steps of what happened. It is not an investigative report of the situation. It is more of a broad overview. They did not talk about the actions, but the ideas behind the actions. They compared the story of Enron to the stories of Icarus, The Emperor's New Clothes, Narcissus. It was creative to hear.

I wonder what people think about Enron. Who is to blame? I do not feel that I am to blame, but I bought into parts of the "new fundamentals." It is part of what lead me to move to San Jose. I think we should be happy Enron fell. If the economy did not have a down turn they might have been able to pull the whole thing off. That would be bad for everyone. I think people should listen to this special if they have the chance.

- Rich, 10:57 PM |

Inverse Ego Surf

Someone recently found Sad Salvation looking for stanley milgram "all things considered" on Google. It is good to know that my web site comes up on the first page of searches on Google. It is true it takes very specific searches for me to come up on the first page.

New Term - Negated Inverted Ego Surf

This is when your web page is no longer listed on the search engine page that someone found it on. I am just a Sad Monkey because of it.

- Rich, 9:46 PM |

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Here is something I did not know before. I can get an ISSN for Sad Salvation. This is something that I would expect Jeremy to know. I wonder if will get one for Imaginary Year.

I took this idea from kookymojo

- Rich, 11:50 PM |

Timeline

25 years ago (1977)
I was in Kindergarten, Willow Dale Elementary School. I had a crush on a girl that was a Tom Boy for the time. She was left back and it was years before I saw her again.

20 years ago (1982)
It was my first year at a new school. I was going there because I had a learning disability. I was a smart kid, but I was not keeping up in class. Three years in a Catholic elementary school was not good for me. I was starting to become poorly socialized also. Being in Special Ed was not good either. I was coming in at the bottom of the social ladder at the school. It was a year of being picked on a lot.

15 years ago (1987)
I was finishing up ninth grade. It was an okay year for me. At this time I was doing well at wrestling. I was in the middle of an undefeated season. I won most of my matches by forfeit. We had a full team which most other Jr. Highs did not have. It was also the end of my Boy Scout career. I was getting too cool for that.

10 years ago (1992)
It was my second year in college. I spent a good part of the year without a roommate. I chased away four different roommates that year. I really liked having a room to myself. This was the first full semester on college radio. I dated a girl who later became a nun. This was also the year my weight started to really balloon.

5 years ago (1997)
I was kicking around my home town trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. My friends had moved to places like Tucson, San Diego, Phoenix. I was close to deciding that I wanted to move also. I just had not figured out where yet. I was working a job that was going nowhere and I knew it. I decided that moving out of town was the best thing I could do. I felt it was the only way I would get out of my Parents' house.

1 year (2001)
It is very much like today. I had the Same Job, Same Apartment, Same Friends, Same life for the most part. It was before the layoffs. It was back when I was not worried about some deciding that they did not need my department. I was just getting used to living in Downtown San Jose. I was starting to explore the city more. I found the an open mic poetry night that I would go to every Monday night. It was interesting to see. It made me want to write more. I did not like the poetry that most people were reading. I was a month away from becoming obsessed with Islam and reading everything I could about it.

One month ago
I was wasting a weekend. It was a Mission to the Moon weekend where I did not leave the apartment at all. I did nothing useful, but I did not spend any money. You have to see the good parts of these weekends.

One week ago
I went to see Rollerball because I knew it was going to be bad.

Yesterday
I worked, had lunch with Don, wrote in my journal, and had leftover pizza for dinner.

One hour ago
Reading e-mail and responding to livejournal posts

I took this idea for Chatty Cathy. Thank you Cathy.
Who took it from Maura.
Who took it from Emrecom

- Rich, 11:22 PM |

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

Work Gamble

At the party on Saturday night I talked to one of the managers from my company. He is in a different department. I told him that I would like my name considered the next time he hires someone into his department. I tried not to seem desperate to change jobs. He told me it was a good seed to plant.

The problem is that this manager is very close to my boss. I do not know if he is going to say anything to my boss. If he does, I am not sure how my boss is going to take it. Customer Support has been under the gun for a little while. I am trying to play this correctly. I would like to move on in the company. I just do not want to lose my job trying to do it.

- Rich, 10:55 PM |

Waking Up

It has been really hard to wake up lately. This morning I did not want to wake up at all. I just wanted to stay in bed. Hitting the snooze button did not help me at all. It has been harder and harder to get up. It does not matter what time I go to bed. Last night I went to bed at midnight and it still was not enough sleep.

I was tired when got home from work tonight. I avoided the urge to take a nap when I got home. I seem to have lost the ability to get up from those naps. They turn into 12 hours of unrestful sleep. I am going to try to go to bed early tonight.

I do not know if I feel off because I am tried of if I am tired because I feel off. Either one might be the truth. I have been feeling like crap for the last couple of days. I should do something about feeling this way all the time. I am just unsure what I should do. I have idea, but those ideas seem to overwhelm me.

- Rich, 10:37 PM |

First there was the Friday Five....

Now there is Tuesday Too. Here are my answers

1.) When are you spending time frivolously on the internet?
Most of the time. I will say that IM and just looking at the same LiveJournal entries again and again at the top of the list.

2.) Would you describe yourself as an east coast or west coast personality type?
I am still very East Coast. I have only been on the West Coast for three years.

3.) It makes me really nervous when I...?
Slacking off at work. I think someone is going to find out I am a fraud.

- Rich, 10:14 PM |

commercial world

Just in case you missed it. You can still see the Super Bowl ads on Ifilm. This is a strange idea to me. There are people going to Ifilm watch. You can see the Olympic Ads or any number of other commercials. I work for a company that give the people to ability to fast forward past ads. It is strange to me that there are ads that people might want to watch over and over again.

- Rich, 2:15 PM |

Wish Lists

For some reason I searched Amazon for Jeff Bezos' Wish List. I was happy to find he has a public Wish List. I wonder if he has a private one also.

There is nothing to confirm that this is really him or not. It could be a gag page. It is hard to be sure.

Someday I am going to make a list of all the Wish Lists I find on blogs.

What do you have on your wish list?

- Rich, 1:08 PM |

Beer Games

Have fun matching up beer labels to beer bottles. I scored 5 out of 12. Then again they did not have Rolling Rock or any other Pennsylvania beer.

- Rich, 9:57 AM |

Disturbing Television Story

I know that this story is about the industry that I work in. I know that I TiVo is working to change the way Network Television works. I just see this as something that could kill television as we know it. For the most part I enjoy television as I know it. I thought that the music industry really needed the pressure that file sharing provided. I think file sharing TV is a bit more greedy from the consumers end.

If commercial television goes away, what is the next model to pay for television?

- Rich, 9:34 AM |

Monday, February 18, 2002

School House Punk

I wonder why ABC did not go create sequels to School House Rock. I would have loved to see School House Grunge or School House Hard Core.

You can go and vote for your favorite School House Rock Segment.

My favorite is Verb: That's What's Happening.

- Rich, 10:22 PM |

Ego Surf City

Lets Start by defining some terms.

Ego Surfing - Looking up your own name in a Search Engine to see how sites mention you.

Reverse Ego Surfing - putting up a list of people, so that if one of them goes egosurfing, theoretically they may come across the bait page with your contact information.

Waxing an Ego Surf - Posting things on the Internet so your name comes up more often or higher up when Ego Surfing. (Comes from waxing a surfboard)

Googlewhack - Typing two words into Google's search bar, with the goal of obtaining a single result. seeing the words "Results 1-1 of 1" appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

I would like to add things to this list.

Inverse Ego Surf - Using the Referral logs of your web site to see how people are using Search Engines to find them.

Egowhack - Searching for things other then your name to see if you can get your web site or weblog to come up on the first page.

Someone recently searched for "Ain't Nothing Going To Break My Stride" and Sad Salvation came up on the first page of the search. I am obsessed at the ways people can find my web page on search engines. I always check it out when I see it in my referral logs.

Labels: ego surfing, google, internet, search

- Rich, 10:19 AM |

Sunday, February 17, 2002

Blog Transfer

I have decided to move my old web log onto the Sad Salvation site. I upgraded to Blogger Pro and I can back date entries. This means I can put them on this site on the correct date. I think it is good to have the whole weblog in one place. It is going to take me a couple of days to do it. At least there is more of a chance of people getting here when they search for Sad Salvation.

- Rich, 10:55 PM |

Weekend

I did two worthwhile things with my time this weekend. The rest of my time was wasted. On Saturday I went to a party. Stephen threw a housewarming/St. Valentines Day/birthday party. It was pretty fun. There was a large contingent of work people there. There were even some ex-TiVo people there. Most of the night I spent talking to people I knew. I met a couple of new people, but it seemed hard to break into most those conversations. I tried to talk to the people I work with in an out of work context.

I noticed that I tend to take over conversations. I would either not be saying anything at all or I would be just dominating. I could not find that place between the two ideas. It was hard to me to be in a conversation with more then one other person. I wanted to get ever other word in. I wonder if I am always this way. It is not something that I have noticed in a long time.

I was one of the first people to get to the party and one of the last people to leave. I had no place better to go if I left the party. I have noticed that this has been the trend at the last couple of parties I have been to. I do not think my friends mind all that much.

I hear a lot of people complain about not having enough time to do all the things they want to do. I am a person with all the time in the world. I could use more social things to do. I could also use more people to do them with. The last thing I would use is more motivation. I seem to have a lot of free time. Some of my time is so free because I cannot motivate myself to do anything.

Since I have all this free time, I want to find people to do things with. I feel that I do not have that many friends in this area. I want to hang out with more people. I am happy I was invited to this party. I do not know when I will get the chance to hang out with a crowd like this again.

There were lots of kids at this party. I never thought I would be the kind of person that did not like kids. For the most part the kids were all over the place. I just do not connect to kids. I seem to live in a different world then they do. If I ever have kids of my own, I think I will be better with other people’s kids then.

I know that I had a really good time at this party, but if you read what is above you would not see that. There were a lot of funny and interesting people there. We talked about everything from electric cars to EverQuest, the Winter Olympics to vacations. I am glad I stayed late because some of the best interactions were at the end. I guess this is another case of me not being able to write about the good things.

- Rich, 9:41 PM |

Current | Archives

Contact me