No hangin' out.

Sometimes I have a busy day at work. Today was one of those days.

Sometimes I get a lot of work done. Today was almost one of those days.

The reason: process. I have 2 bug fixes, but I can't call em done
until they go through a process that proves that my change isn't
adding more bugs than it's removing. A lengthy process. One with many
moving parts.

For the last few days, these parts have failed to move entirely,
leaving me with work I can't really do any more work on, but that
isn't actually finished. So I loop in a bunch of other people in an
attempt to get this process machine running again. Other coworkers are
having the same problem with their machines. It all points to a
problem external to ourselves: the engine is fine, but you can't use a
combustion engine in a vaccuum.

So I call the folks with all the oxygen and say, "Hey. Oxygen folk. We
need some." But instead of giving us oxygen, they just kinda look
around and say, "we've got oxygen here. What's the problem?"

This goes on for an hour, a time that would kill anyone who actually
did need oxygen.

And when you finally convince them that yes, you do need air, the task
of giving it to you is passed off to another person who doesn't truly
understand that not giving this to us immediately is stopping us from
running our process and getting actual work done. Why is this how it
works?

Because that's their process. And they've got all the oxygen.

The moon doesn't count.

Even on a super clear night, after a beautiful day of cloudless sun,
there are no stars in Seattle.

This bugs me.

Not all thinking is good.

This was a tough week. Fairly draining. I did have some fine PieMo
merch to help me get through it, but that only does so much.

Literally 8 bugs resolved this week. That's madness for me. I have 8
more to go over the next 3 weeks, but they really are harder ones.
Regardless of difficulty I was just on fire about being motivated to
get my shit done.

But I'm drained. And I need to be as motivated in the weeks to come.
So for the sake of my job I need to do fun things this weekend to
energize me to work.

But I don't tend to do that anymore. None of the folks I know in
Seattle ask me to do things- they're just not that kind of friend to
me. And I've become tired of bugging them to hang out with me. So the
result is me, at home, all weekend.

It's crap.

And then work serves as a relief: after a 2 day haiatus, I'm finally
surrounded by people who want to talk to me. My occupation shouldn't
serve ad my only social outlet. But I do need folks to kim me in the
pants once in a while to do what's really best for me.

I'm going to be diappointes by this weekend. I know it.

blogging powers for good.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/09/help_find_hannah_upp.html Friend of a friend is missing in NY. If you've seen something, let the authorities know.

story premise

I had this great idea for a story yesterday. The basic premise is this:

How do you tell the difference between something you remember and something you dreamed? Really, the only major difference is memory continuity -- you wake up one day, and have two distinct memories of something having just happened. Either your last day ended and you went to bed, or you had some adventure that we believe was generated by your subconscious. Most of the time your brain figures it out with the following logic: one means you should be in bed, which you are, and the other means you should be running away from Ninjas in china or something because you stole their prized statue of a green monkey. It could happen.

But during most dreams, you believe everything at face value. And you seem to lack the memory of having just gone to bed. Somehow this continuity isn't questioned.

Oh man i'm spinning off a couple of different ideas about dreams, all story worthy.

• Original idea: Every one of your dreams ends the same, you are somehow tricked into pushing a red button that sends you back to the waking world and destroys your memory of the dream. Like Groundhog Day but with a sinister puppetmaster toying with you every night to make you push this button. Except you notice a girl beginning to recurr in your dreams. Each time, it's her trying to stop you from pushing the button, as this dream world needs your help desperately, but so many times you end up pushing the button anyway (which usually erased the memory of her, but she keeps appearing in the bits you remember) The puppetmaster of this dream world is doing something bad, and you can stop him if only you could break this horrible cycle of red-button pressing. 
• Spin off 1: Every dream begins the same as well. You wake up from your bed and do something. But this memory is so mundane that it is lost.
• Spin off 2: What do sleepwalkers think when they wake up? Or hungover people when they don't entirely remember how they got there either? This seems to break my theory of memory continuity, as folks are still just as easily able to tell what was a memory and what was a dream. Well, maybe notsomuch with the drinking. hm...

So yeah i really only have one idea. but I like it. I should figure more out.

TROUTED!!!

Really? Is this a real thing?

Apparently so. I got an IM from someone named opinionatedtrout, asking simply "Would you like the keys to a shiny new Austrailia?"

The cleverly reworded Dr. Horrible reference was enough to get me interested. I responded that getting one certainly would dry my tears. To which they simply responded "sure, why not?" and let the conversation go silent.

I've come to terms with the fact that the internet is a fairly weird place. Just sitting idly on it, there is a chance I'll get IM'd by a stranger, or by a bot trying to phish for my information, or perhaps by someone I know but don't actually want to talk to. Most of these are simply ignored. But normally when other folks start a conversation with me, and I engage, I expect them to have something more to say. Well, unless the start was simply "hey. hey. what's up. not much, u. not much."

So I did a search for it. Apparently Professor Chaos learned how to program an AIM chat bot that would start conversations between strangers. And that's called trouting. or something.

Anyways. I figured it out. What was a bot was now a kid from SoCal. Who hadn't seen Dr. Horrible. So I sent 'em the link.