Barcamp Seattle Tomfoolery

A few weekends ago, I attended BarCamp Seattle. It's an unconference, which is basically a conference with a very ad-hoc plan. Last year I was mostly a lurker -- I didn't present anything and my only contribution was in a few of the group discussions. I had a blast and decided I really needed to do something this year. So I gave a talk.

Social Microgames
I like beer. And I like being social in unconventional ways. Originally, I wanted to talk about how this sparked the Friday Unwind social events, and a generally awesome peer atmosphere at my old team. The idea being I would tell people this kind of thing was a Good Idea^TM and they should do it too. But it felt like bragging. And was kinda boring. In the end, I cut a lot of stuff and decided just to focus on what made the Friday Unwind fun: the odd little games we played during it.

"Social Microgames" was the awkward phrase I coined for those games. Jinx and Rock/Paper/Scissors were my two common examples. Both have well understood rules, take about 5 seconds to play, and make interacting with other people a bit more fun. It went really well, and I was pleased to find out everyone else did something similar among their friends. I learned a handful of new games, and it was a good time all around. I also mentioned my success in playing the Dollar Game, where entertaining stuff happens for money. My slides are here and a video of it is here forthcoming as soon as Brian puts it up.

Jay's Webcock
@strutting did a great talk on things you should not do on Twitter, presented by facetiously recommending bad things to do. It was pretty funny. Unfortunately, the room we were in didn't have a projector, so all the work that Jay had put into his slides had been for his eyes only. Despite that, it was enjoyable talk that highlighted great ways to make a mess of twitter, including retweeting inane tweets.

We joked around for a bit afterward. Jay retweeted himself, making him a webcock. I retweeted his tweet about himself, making myself a webcock. It was good times.

Our ideas had a baby
I took it one step further by combining the webcockery of retweeting, the fun of my microgames, and the spirit of getting folks to talk with this tweet. Essentially, I challenged someone to re-talk the webcock talk.

Fortunately, there were some good folks in the crowd. @dyanw had missed the webcock session, but stepped up and decided to gave Jay's talk again. It was a train wreck from the start, with technical issues forcing Dylan to talk for a good 10 minutes about Webcocks without any guide whatsoever. To both their credits, Jay's slides were really nice and once they were up Dylan did a great job of presenting them as their own. I'm still not sure how many folks there got the whole in-joke, but Jay & I were laughing all the way through. Dylan clarified afterward to those who might've been confused..

The Epilogue
As a side note, it turns out that my Dollar Game has actually been made into a website. Well done, interwebs.

Multiple Identities

People with different responsibilities are said to put on different hats to illustrate which responsibility is currently governing their thought. I just put on a hat when I go run around outside and chase flying plastic.

But over time I do seem to have developed two distinct names, each associated with their own personality. In retrospect, it seems like a perfectly normal and sensible thing to do, but it also kind of makes me wonder which is the actual me.

Chris - Most of you know me as Chris. This is what I call myself in front of most people. A mild-mannered, polite individual. Chris wears collared shirts on occasion and has combed his hair the same way since the 4th grade. Chris is very risk-averse, and fairly antisocial. Chris would rather sit in silence to avoid saying something controversial than engage in conversation in an unfamiliar surrounding.

Downie - This is the Ultimate Player. Originally a simple disambiguation term between other Chris's on my team, I go by Downie even if there aren't other Chris's. Downie is aggressive, competitive, and horribly foul-mouthed. Off-color, racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive jokes are common from Downie. Downie's reaction to most things are to yell, swear, or both. This includes positive and negative reactions. Downie usually wears a hat.

There is certainly some cross-pollination between these personas. Mostly it's Chris drawing from Downie's better features. Karaoke is a prime example of this, especially when I get up in front of people I don't know and confidently belt out lyrics that may or may not be in my vocal range at the top of my lungs. Chris would not do that on his own.

Unfortunately, this cross-pollination is also occurring amongst the folks who interact with the different personas. Folks who know me as Chris at work see me playing ultimate and wonder why they call me Downie. Or folks I've met from the ultimate community see me in some business-like situation introducing myself to others as Chris while in conversation they still refer to me as "Downie" out of habit. It's confusing. For everyone but me, that is.

But to me, it's not a matter of confused identity or a rapid change of personal preference. I'm called by each of these names for a reason. Each represents a different person I bring to the surface to deal with the current situation, or put another way, each represents a different part of me that I share with the world when needed. While I've had way more names than just these 2, they're the ones that have stuck around long enough to develop distinct personality traits.

Also, for the record, Chris will respond if you call him "Downie", but Downie won't respond if you call him "Chris". Mostly because I still assume you must be talking to someone else, because I'm Downie right now, bitch.

How to Run Drills

A Short Aside

In the grand scheme of things, I plan to write a reference for all my Ultimate knowledge/opinions. The problem with "now" vs "the grand scheme" is just a matter of it's hard to know where to start. So I'm not actually starting it. I just had some clear ideas that I felt I needed to write down so here they are. Also: these may apply to other sports as well, but Ultimate is simply what I'm most familiar with.

Intro

Most people overlook the value of giving adequate time to organize and run a drill properly. Sometimes it's because time is limited, or your team has a short attention span, or it's cold and you really can't focus. But rambling through a description, and just letting the team try their best is no more effective at teaching skills then telling your players to run laps.

For a drill to be effective, the players must know what to do, when to do it, and most importantly, why they're doing it.

What They're Doing

Experienced teams skip this step, largely because they're familiar with the more common drills, and can simply call them out by name. However, even experienced teams would benefit from going over drill details from time to time because there are so many things that happen at once, it's easy to forget the smaller details.

Each drill has 2 phases, which for brevity I'll call an "active" phase and a "reset" phase. The active phase is when players are actively executing part of the drill; they're running or throwing or jumping or whathaveyou. The reset phase is what the player falls into after they've finished the active phase; It's whatever extra action needs to occur before the player can enter the active phase again. This may involve just running back to the same spot, rotating to a different position, or bringing a disc back to a thrower. This is the phase most commonly overlooked when trying to just describe a drill quickly.

While describing the motion during the active phase effectively is really a matter of style and personal preference, I've found a few types of descriptions tend to work well. A miniature representation of the drill -- either with a whiteboard or moving upturned discs on the ground -- gives the players an overview of what the whole drill should look like. Additionally, having a few veteran players who have done the drill before act it out at full speed is a nice transition from the slow, miniature model to the real world. However, jumping straight from verbal description to having players act it out is somewhat less effective, as players can't see everything that's happening at once.

When To Do It

Most drills rely on a kind of flow. A goes over there, catches a disc, turns, and expects to be able to throw to player B who is cutting towards A. If B is there early, A will have to make a different throw; too late and A is just stuck waiting. In this case, players A and B both have a clear understanding of what they should be doing, they just don't know when to do it in order to keep the flow of the drill constant.

This sort of detail is most commonly left out of the drill's description, and its value is usually overlooked. Giving players a good sense of *when* they should be where is just as crucial as where they should be going. That way, the motion of the drill is kept smooth, and players don't need to keep adjusting their throws to the timing of other cuts.

With enough well-timed cuts, the team should be able to develop spatial chemistry: knowing where someone is on the field without even having to look. This leads to more confident players, more reliable throws, and generally faster offensive play. All because nobody's stuck with the disc, waiting for their man to cut.

Why They're Doing It

The next big issue that coaches overlook when describing how to run a drill is to explain why this is a good drill to run. The reason needs to mean something to the players performing the drill, so not giving a reason means they're simply doing it because that's what the coach said. Such a reason gives the players little more value from the drill than if they had simply run in circles for that period of time.

Most drills have in-game analogues. They may represent ideal in-game situations that never actually happen, but just making that connection for the player will give them a better chance of doing the well-practiced option learned from the drill in game. This drill teaches you how to hit a timed in-cut on the open side. This teaches you how to break the mark. Even skills-focused drills should be justified; this drill will make you faster, help you throw while you're tired, improve your low-release throws, defend against someone taller than you, etc.

Giving the player a context in which they can see a drill in real game will not only improve the drill's effectiveness, it'll also make the player focus on the skill he's supposed to be learning from the drill at hand. Otherwise, a lot of the player's effort will be lost by simply running in circles.

Perfection's in the Details

The beauty of all this is that each drill has a wealth of details that tend to be overlooked. Taking the time to focus on the details like proper motion, timing, and motivation gives the players a very rigid, very high bar that they should try to meet. Additionally, this gives even seasoned players the ability to run these drills time and time again, always trying to improve to hit these key details every single time. Without the wealth of detail, a team could run the drill poorly or even adequately and not have it occur to them what (or even if) they're doing something wrong.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9

I ordered myself a netbook last week, and it finally came on Saturday. A couple of folks have been asking me about my experiences with it, so I figured I'd provide a short review for those looking at buying themselves a netbook.

Specs
I got a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 because I found it on sale -- $300 for Ubuntu with an 8Gb solid state hard drive, 1Gb RAM, Bluetooth, and 1.3Mp camera. This makes it by far the cheapest computer I've ever bought, but also the most I've ever paid for hard disk space. But I digress.

Before I go on...
Generally, I am of the opinion that Dells are crap machines. My roommate had a Dell in college and the only advantage his had over my ThinkPad T41 (and then over my MacBook Pro) was that he would get a higher score than me on flash-based games because the game would have to slow down for him to play it. Which is why he refused for the longest time to upgrade his laptop, even when the thing roared like a jet engine because after 5 minutes of usage it had to hit the fans into high gear to stop itself from melting.

So, in my mind, Dell is a synonym for a crap computer with poor heat & noise management and crappy plastic construction.

But, for $300, I wasn't expecting a MacBook Air, so I was willing to give it a shot.

First Impressions

Despite my predisposition against the brand, I was actually quite pleased with the machine. It feels pretty well built and is amazingly silent. It's quieter than my MacBook Pro, and it's the sort of difference that can only be heard when I put my ear right up to the fan. Very impressive.

In a few of my marathon sessions of using the device, the bottom did become a bit warm. However, it never got so hot as to be really uncomfortable to have in your lap, like any of the other laptops I've played with. So all and all, I felt good using it.

Battery Life
The battery lasted a good while, too. I got about 4 hours of usage out of the device when starting from a full charge. During that time, I had roughly 3 programs open: Firefox, Pidgin, and Adobe Reader. I also toyed with some of the built-in programs, like the cheap linux games & camera stuff. Speaking of which...

Built-in Software
A lot of the software that came on the device was generally what you'd find with any Linux distro -- some Gnome-based games, a Minesweeper clone, a typing tutor, OpenOffice, etc. A lot of the prepopulated web links were to Dell or Yahoo, so I'm sure they've got some deal going on there.

There's also a program called the Dell launcher, which feels like a less polished version of Apple's Stacks. If you're OK with not seeing the desktop, this is a surprisingly easy and intuitive way to launch your programs. As you can see, one of the first things I did was add Emacs to mine.

You'll also notice that the topbar is partially offscreen. This is because I told it to auto-hide so I could use as much of the 9-inch screen as possible. I also added a firefox plugin to remove the "File".

Keyboard Quirks
For the most part, the keyboard is fine. Yes, it's a bit smaller than a full keyboard, but I was expecting that for a tiny netbook. After typing on it for a bit, you don't really notice how much smaller the keyboard is.

With one tiny exception.

Apparently, the engineers at Dell decided that us touch-type folks didn't ever really use concatenations or quotations when we were trying to type on the go, so they took the single- and double-quote key and moved it below the "." key. At first this was a bit annoying but it's gotten the part where it's actually pissing me off quite a bit. There's no sense in me trying to fight years of muscle-memory just for this one keyboard, and the result is that any IM conversation where I try to use "don't" or "I've" results in me accidentally sending the message mid-word. And I've done this a lot.

I've given up trying to correct this error, so if you're chatting with me and you see this happening, you'll know what computer I'm on.

(Also, the "-" or "_" key is now moved to just right of "p", which is a problem I've run into a few times in IM conversations, but it's nowhere as bad as the damn apostrophe thing)

Performance
In lieu of doing official, statistics-like testing, here are a few tidbits I've gotten from just using it or maybe timing it with a stop watch:

• Startup takes just over 30s from a cold start.
• Startup takes about 5s when resuming from a suspended state. 
• Hulu videos play fine when windowed at standard resolution. Bumping them up to high resolution or expanding full screen results in dropped frames.
• Camera (with "Cheese", a Photo Booth knock-off) takes higher-resolution pictures than the camera on my MacBook Pro, but the center of the picture is a bit blurry. (see below)
• Built-in speakers are pretty loud-- as loud or louder than my MacBook Pro.

(Left: Photo Booth picture. Right: Cheese picture. Both images were taken at the same time.)

Minor Quirks

There were a few things that struck me as odd or annoying. 

• If you don't interact with the computer for a few minutes, it forgets that you set the brightness on the display, and decides to crank it up. Which results in me cranking the brightness down time and time again.
• "Cheese" can use the built-in camera to take video, but it records in .ogg format. This in itself isn't a problem, except that the Totem Media player doesn't play that file type. I imagine this will go away when I install VLC.
• Scrolling can be a bit laggy when you use the sides of the trackpad for vertical or horizontal scrolling. It's been hit or miss for me with being very responsive, and "Oh crap its still scrolling nooooo"

Final Verdict

In sort, I'd recommend the Inspiron Mini 9, but definitely as a secondary machine. It's got pretty decent power & battery life for a portable computer, and I've enjoyed toying with it for a weekend. 

It also makes my 15" screen feel insanely large for a laptop after getting accustomed to 9". :)

PS: My website renders perfectly on Firefox/Ubuntu despite no prior testing. This is why standards are awesome.

Blogger Block

I've tried 3 times to write a new blog post. There are a handful of ideas I feel like I've mulled over enough for there to be value in me sharing them. But then I begin writing them, and my rusty writing skill doesn't do what I want to convey justice. So I try writing for a bit, look at it, and decide that it's not going how I want to. I stop and start over.

Talking about it would be easier -- on my blogs my words must speak for themselves, for I don't have that convenient feedback loop of watching the reader and changing what is said based on how well they're getting what I'm saying. I also know who's listening. I only know a handful of folks who read this, but I'm sure there are more that I don't know. Which I realize is the thrill & risk of hosting a public personal blog.

I'm not even that satisfied with this entry, but I'm sick of trying so hard and having nothing to prove for it. So nuts to that.

7 Things You Probably Don't Know About Me

The rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

I was tagged by Alix Han.
I've tried to choose things most folks won't know. So to those of you who knew some of this already and feel shortchanged: Bonus points for already being a good friend! 

1. My first childhood dream was to become a singer. I was in a choir. I even wrote 3 songs. All this and I still managed to never learn how to read sheet music. (I just memorized the tune when others sang it)
2. I had a secret first girlfriend in Junior High school. It was very benign -- we never did more than hold hands. I don't remember much of it because it ended badly and as such I told myself it didn't count and blocked it from my memory. Which was surprisingly effective, as I only remembered it a few years ago.
3. I wrote a rap song to help my Ultimate team get into Potlatch last year. The song was about a quirky Ultimate player who had attained legendary status at Cal. It took like 2 days to write and ended up with about 45s of audio. My appreciation of rap music grew a thousandfold. 
4. A (presumably unusual) high percentage of my ex-girlfriends give the thought of dating girls a whirl shortly after dating me. Some of them were just temporarily experimenting, while others truly were more into women after all, and I was simply their proof by contradiction. 
5. Before there was a YouTube, I was one of the kids who got a webcam and put video of me talking on the internet. Most of it was crap, but when I got video editing software I had a fun time editing it and got some good episodes out of it. When I went to college, I made a trailer for the "College Edition" of the Chris Show, but then had too little free time in college to actually keep making it.
6. I want to get a tattoo, but don't have a clue what it would be of or where I would put it. I also want to try giving myself a different hairstyle, but don't know what else would look good on me. I had long hair at one point in college, and put my hair up with a hair tie to keep it out of my eyes. The nickname "Samurai" lasted a few weeks. All the ladies said I looked better once I cut my hair short again, so short it's stayed.
7. On completely separate occasions, I've had someone threaten to kill me, a gun pointed at my head, and got in a fight that was started by my friend's mother at my friend's birthday party. 

I choose you: Mignon Chu, Edith Han, Julia Ferraioli, David Nickolson, Kutlay Topatan, Lisa Bernard, Talie Kurilovich.

Nerd Wallets!

I decided to make myself a new wallet. There were some problems with the old one, and the ones I could buy didn't have what I wanted. 

The Old Wallet

My old wallet was the first one I actually made myself. Doing my best to be a faithful nerd, I decided to make it entirely out of Duct tape, because what nerd doesn't want a Duct Tape wallet. In fact, the wallet it replaced was a Ducti-brand Duct Tape wallet that I got as a gift. But I wanted to make one for myself, and so I did. 

It only took a few hours, and there wasn't much forethought. Really all I had thought out was how long I'd have to make the pieces of tape so that the fold could hold money. And that's literally all I had thought about. So a few hours later all I had was a foldable pocket for cash, only to realize that I also wanted to carry around my ID and credit cards and the like. Whoops. 

Some ad-hoc planning later and I eventually figured out how to make pockets. I wrapped some tape sticky-side-out around a credit card, and then just stuck the card in the wallet where I wanted a pocket. Voila! Instant pocket. Problem solved.

But, it's not lasting. The Duct tape is wearing away -- there are some holes around the corners and the stickiness is beginning to rub off on my credit cards and whatever else is also in my pocket. And I had kinda jammed too many cards into my afterthought pockets. So I wanted to make a new wallet with the following goals:

• Not made of Duct Tape so that sticky thing doesn't happen.
• RFID-blocking so I don't need a special sleeve for my ID
• An external pocket so I don't have to open my wallet to show the bus driver my bus pass
• Enough pockets to fit all the cards I actually use in my wallet.
• A high degree of nerd factor where possible.

The New Wallet

I must say, this is a pretty freakin sweet wallet. I was poking around for tape in my closet and I stumbled upon one of my boxes of aging computer parts. Inside, there was a bag of connectors that had never been used and it hit me. 2 parallel ATA cables could be used to make the wallet. Hell yes.

The dimensions worked out almost perfectly. It turns out the length of a standard PATA cable from Asus is about twice the length of a wallet. So, I got crackin. I hacked away at the connectors so I just had the cable, cut the PATA cables in half, and ironed them flat. Yes, I ironed plastic & copper because THAT IS HOW I ROLL.

Once I was convinced the PATA wallet concept could work, I actually did a bit of designing. I played a bit with paper prototypes to see what kinda size I could make and where I could put pockets. I tried to mimic my old wallet as much as possible, because I do like it. But I also planned out where each of the cards in my current wallet would go before I made the pockets. Which I feel might be a bit obsessive. But I didn't want to end up with not enough pockets or some other glaringly obvious omission at the end. Not again, anyway.

Without going into the extreme detail of its construction (which may only be interesting to me) I managed to get everything I wanted. I did some fancy stitch work with needle & thread to hold everything together. The pockets are made of a different, lightweight material I cut out of a free blanket bag I stole from the Company Meeting. The horizontal pockets on the inside of the wallet are also lined with aluminum foil because early tests showed that the copper in the cables alone weren't enough to fully shield the RFID card. But, they're tastefully hidden inside the pocket, so it's functional and fashionable!

The result is one sturdy, fairly lightweight wallet. That is also UBER AWESOME.

I didn't think of everything, however. After the first day of use, a problem became apparent. The ends of the wallet still had exposed copper (which I thought was cool) but it was rough to the touch, and would bend and get caught in my pocket. I considered doing some fancy stitch work to put some material over the end, but instead, I decided to go with a bit of nostalgia. 

As a bit of a homage to my first wallet, I put some black Duct Tape over the ends. Problem solved.

A Proper Vacation, For Once.

Just got back from a great weekend in San Diego. Mid to high 70's, a cloudless Saturday at the beach getting a tan and a beautiful sunset after strolling around Balboa park on Sunday. It was a lot to do in a weekend, and in my usual "get there first - plan things later" method of vacationing, I owe a great debt of thanks to Mignon & Chi, who always knew the cool thing to do next, even if they had trouble figuring out how to get there.

Leaving was tough. This was the weather I missed. These were the people I missed. How could I go back to Seattle? I was beginning to think I had failed.

I had failed because the point of this vacation was to reinvigorate me. Seattle has had an absolutely shitty winter. The holidays ruined my drive at work -- either I was at work struggling without the aid of my coworkers who were on vacation, or I was on vacation having all my energy sapped out of my by family interaction. I was burnt out from being at work, and from being away from work. For my productivity, and for my sanity, that needed to be fixed.

I needed another vacation. A break from work that, for once, also included a break from being stressed. So, I booked a weekend trip to San Diego, to clear my head, regain my sanity, and be more ready to get shit done at work.

Also, Mignon was bugging me to visit.

As I was sitting on the plane back to Seattle, awaiting it to take off, it had appeared that I simply hadn't gotten that hat trick. Yes, it was an amazing time, I had cleared my head, regained my sanity, and truly enjoyed myself. But the last thing I wanted to do was go back to work -- to go back to Seattle. To go back to the cold, the rain -- away from the beaches, the sunsets, the stars, the close friends.

The fact that my return had become an unwanted one only further eroded the work ethic I had attempted to rebuild.

But, the flight was 2 and a half hours. That's plenty of time for a man to think. This particular brand of thinking involved a $5 rum & coke and a bunch of Texas Hold 'em on my iPhone. Two things hit me. One: Meg did a pretty damn good job of teaching me how to play poker. Two: This was just a vacation high. It will fade, and hopefully overall I'll still have been a bit rejuvenated from the experience.

When I got off the plane, the familiar & cold Seattle air hit my skin once again. Except, to my surprise, it felt oddly... refreshing. Pretty damn good, actually. It was like waking up after a full night's sleep. The impact of it intensified once I got out to my car. Instead of the oppressive, omnipresent cold that I had left, the cold was now reduced to a belligerent bully who nobody likes but no one has stood up to yet. And now that I was back, I was ready to kick its ass.

I drove home full speed, with the windows down. A passing sign reported the temperature to be 37 degrees. I laughed and drove faster.

Turns out I hadn't failed after all. I'm back, and the troubles I left here only a few days ago are all pissant douchebags in need of a solid ass kicking. And, instead of just ditching and going to another party, I'm ready to put up my dukes and defend this one.

So: work, weather, whatever -- bring it on. I'm ready to do what needs to be done.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

This is what it looks like outside our cabin. It is snowing. Quite a
bit, actually.

There were plans to go hit the mountain, but the folks font want to so
that while snow is coming down. So we instead stay indoors. I don't
think I've left the house since my friends were here. Fun!

Before/After

Tada! This is what I do at airports. At least the ones I show up to
hours early because I'm afraid the wearer will make the roads hard for
the bus to get me there on time only to have the flight constantly
delayed while I'm at the airport.

Actually, after taking this picture I discovered my new beer had a fly
in it. I didn't think that actually happened. But apparently it does.

Woohoo unwinding by myself!

Snow Day

Lots of snow today. It was supposed to come yesterday, but so much for
that.

It's weird because this is not like the other places I've had to deal
with snow; and this is dealing with it in a different way entirely.

Normally, I go to the snow. Wait from afar to have it fall, wait for
them to clear the roads, and then go to the snow. It also means that
most times I'm around snow it's intended to be a vacation. So snow
means no work.

Also, in the event that it does snow in Tahoe, this never really
changes our plans. Sure, we can put chains on the tires, but we're not
inhibited from going out at all except that one time where we got
snowed in. But that was a really bad storm. Today was not bad by those
standards but Seattle came to a standstill.

Busses were reroute or cancelled. Lots of cars were spinning out along
the freeways. At least two restaurants on my street never opened. The
commute issue caused massive amounts of MSFT employees to work from
home: excessive load on the servers then made it horribly slow to get
anything done.

It annoys me that Seattle can't deal with snow. I think it might me
more of how the city handles it rated than how the residents do.

Anyways. I need to pack. Hopefully there won't be commute issues
getting to the airport so by the end of tomorrow I can be somewhere
that oat horrified of snowfall.

How Not to Party

I have lots of little voices in my head. Probably not literally, but there are a number of different perspectives I see on a given situation at once, each of them trying to influence what action I take. So it's easy enough to personify these perspectives, give them voices, and then view my thought process as a bunch of dwarves brawling, because that would be awesome.

One of the whinier dwarf voices is that of Doubt. Always asking "what if". Like you gave a chipmunk caffeine and and inherent fear of life and just let it talk endlessly. Everything I face there's a part of me that tries to think a few steps ahead, at how things could possibly go wrong, as proof that I shouldn't do anything, because the worst is inevitable, and I don't want the worst, do I?

This is especially true when I'm dealing with loads of other people. Like, for instance, at a party. Perhaps a winter party with a bunch of coworkers at a golf club at a fancy town in the hills just south of Bellevue. One where everyone comes dressed up nicer than usual because it's not just a party -- it's a dinner party.

Now, in this situation, I'm surrounded by people that I want to have a positive view of me in whatever context I consider them to be a part of. I want folks I consider friends to view me positively by the metric I view friends. I want coworkers to see me in a bit more presentable, professional light. And, for people I don't know, I want to be polite, cordial, and even witty, because I haven't quite decided which context I want them to view me in yet.

A party of this size has folks in all sorts of contexts. And it drives that caffeinated dwarf chipmunk of Doubt absolutely bonkers.

I want to relax and have fun. But I do that with friends, not with coworkers. Do I tell them stories of my day? No, that could go wrong, and why would you want to do that anyway they're coworkers. What if I say "fuck"? Oh heaven's no don't do that people will be offended. Jokes? Maybe but keep it tasteful -- no racial stuff, no sexy stuff, in fact, no jokes might be best after all.

The result of all this is an extra layer of thinking. Of debating if I should say what popped into my head or not. It's not a trivial amount of effort to do, so it's quite taxing. And worse yet, this is all in a setting that's under the guise of being a party, where you relax and have fun, and spend time with friends. And instead, I'm tense, very self-aware, and talking work talk with coworkers because I know that domain is easier to tread without negative consequence.


I have two ways out of this. The first is easy: bring friends. With enough folks around me that know me well enough, Doubt shuts the hell up because it's really got nothing to say. And then if some coworkers stray into the conversation, no worries, I'm already having a fun time, they can masquerade as friends in my head if it keeps the momentum of the evening going.

The alternative is a bit more difficult. It requires a different dwarf to step in and bitchslap Doubt across his puny face. Because he's sick of hearing Doubt's shit -- Doubt's all talk and no action. This new doubt is Boldness, and it does indeed help if Boldness has had a drink or two before he tries brawling with other dwarves and talking louder than he realizes.

The gist of Boldness is to just tell Doubt to shut the fuck up, your wining is only making this worse, and there's no fun to be had if you just sit on your ass and do nothing. A man of action, Boldness wants to do things which can't have all their possible negative consequences enumerated.

Unfortunately, this year Boldness didn't offer much more than talk. Last year, friends helped, and Boldness got me to come alive and have tons of fun with the folks I work with. This time round, he tried, but (a) I had less to drink and (b) there was no clear idea of what benign mischief I could cause that would liven the party up. Also, there were just fewer friends. That hardly helped.


The one saving grace of the evening was the afterparty. A short drive to a coworker's house, with a friend and a number of people I don't really work with. A bit of time sharing embarassing stories, sexy hip moves, and rocking out to "Man I Feel Like a Woman". That's fun. That's a party.

Quick update

This trip deserves a much longer Blog entry, but all I have time for is a short one.

Today was the result of poor planning, of poor common sense. The idea of extending my trip a few days was that it would give me a few extra days in the Bay Area to hang with friends, and also because it would save me about $100 on airfare. Win-win.

But then that leaves today. It's a Monday, and I'm in Berkeley. It's one of my days that I get to spend with friends, in theory. But everyone's got posters and projects, midterms and essays, or they have a job. Everyone is busy with things to do, because in the normal world people get things done on Monday, despite their laziness screaming at them that it's a lot of work and napping is a lot more rewarding.

So I once again find myself with time to waste. I sleep in. Hit up one of my favorite spots for lunch. And all my elaborate time wasting leaves me at about 12:30pm with 5 or so hours to go before friends can hang out, and they've figured out that I'm not a student anymore, so I can't get free wireless around campus. Bugger.

The result is a very long afternoon spent at a cafe. I got a bit of work done -- some design work that, though I hate working on vacations, I really should have done a while ago. Then I began to play a game, but it didn't feel right. That's about as well as I can describe it. Slacking off with mindless agmes didn't seem like the right thing to do.

I instead spent my time on other projects that I had neglected. A bit of graphics work. A bit of HTML & CSS on the next rev of my website -- mostly proof of concept stuff but it's working well enough to actually use. I'm impressed. And pleased with myself. ">

I don't know what it is about my surroundings, but there's something psychologically empowering about being in Berkeley. It's probably just a mental block or something I have about pursuing the things I want to do while i'm in the confines of my family's household. It's not a good thing -- but it's good to know it's a thing.

Anyway. Now it's friend-hang-out-time.

2 therefore n? as in November?

I'm on track so far. Which is easy considering it's been 2 days so far.
I managed to have vegetarian for dinner last night, so bonus there, but I only managed until about 7pm without eating, rather than going through the night hungry. Probably a good choice, as it was pretty rough towards the end.

Also: cardio workout yesterday and balance & quad endurance today. And I'm ahead on my word count.

Tomorrow will tax me, because as of yet, I was getting everything done precisely because I had no work to do. But tomorrow, I have work to do.

Here's to hopin'.

November Targets

A bit late, but here's what my plans are for this month:

• Complete NaNoWriMo. Big goal.
• Video games only if I'm ahead on my word count. This will absolutely suck.
• Eat Vegetarian with 2 exceptions: Thanksgiving & potentially Saturdays. Bonus if I manage to be vegetarian on Saturday as well. Oh, also, I'm going to say fish qualifies as vegetarian cuisine.
• Fast on Sunday. Sunrise to sunset, bonus if I manage to sleep sunday night without eating.
• Daily workouts, 3 a week will be cardio. Bonus if I get more than 3 days with cardio workout.
• Big TV off after 11pm. I'll either read or write after then.
• Meditation 3 times a week? I think so. I need to get that skill back.
• Be more social? I don't know how I can quantify this. But somehow.

Let's go november.

Like New Years Resolutions, but earlier.

I need to change a lot of things about my life. The more I think about it, the more distinct the image of who I want to be becomes. And the more I realize how that is not like me.

The biggest difficulty with my goal is I want it to be sustainable. I've had smaller goals that I've reached, only to go back on them in the long run. Things like a target weight, an exercise regimen, cooking a real meal once a week, forcing myself to try new things, and being more social than I perceive myself to be. In my first year in Seattle, I did all of these things, and I felt good about having done them, but did not keep them up. And now I find myself doing none of these things, and I'm rather unhappy with myself about each of these things, but not so strongly as to bring about a change of habits.

I'm in a rut.

A look back on situations I'm doing differently now:

• Work. Then: In around 10, leave by 5:30. My working hours revolved around my life and whatever activities I did outside of work. Now: I'm in earlier, I go home later. I'm focused more on what work I've finished than how much work I've done. 
• Ultimate. Then: I played 2 or 3 times a week, mostly pickup, but always regular. Now: I have a team, but we don't practice. I don't make it out to lunch games anymore. I play once a week, at best.
• Weeknights. Then: Freakin busy. Dancing Mondays, Thai Tuesdays, Puzzle Wednesdays, Cooking Thursdays, and Drinking Fridays. Now: Just the Fridays. The rest of my weeknights are TV shows or video games.
• Weather. Then: The weather didn't phase me. It was even a bit exciting when the rain began, because it's really not something I'm used to. Now: I'm distrustful of sunny days, as they seem to tease me of what it could be like all the time, but isn't.

I don't think these are all unrelated changes, but they all stem from a common cause. I wanted the real world to be a better version of college. My first reaction when the real world met my idea of what the real world should be was to change the real world. A rare few of these changes have held (Friday drinking and a general atmosphere of socialness amongst my coworkers being the only one that comes to mind). 

And then, after a while, it's hard to keep the momentum going. Especially when there's such little positive reinforcement for my efforts. I stop trying as hard. And as a result, I see what was likely to be the outcome anyway, for much less effort. And the cycle repeats. I'm not getting any better at Ultimate, why keep playing. I'm not accruing a posse of friends that I feel comfortable with asking to hang out with at the drop of a hat, nevermind finding a handful of people I could genuinely trust. I'm not getting used to crap for weather.

And so I sit. Locally trying to optimize my reward per effort has gone from an active social life to me & an Xbox. And I'm genuinely unhappy about it.

That is who I am right now. The uphill climb to who I want to be has had a bit of a landslide and brought me back down here. And while there's a chance that route would work if I simply dug deep and gave it another go, I'm thinking I'll try a different route this time.

If I don't like reality as I perceive it, and changing reality has failed, all that's left is to change my perception of that reality. Then the only thing that can stop me from creating that change is myself. I'm hoping I'll be easier to change than the rest of the world has proven to be. 

I haven't quite figured out what I want to change, but I've gotten a timeline. By the end of next week I'll have a list of things to do different, of better ways to spend my time than I'm spending them now. And then November will be when it kicks in. All the changes, all at once, for one month. 

Wish me luck.

Trust My Decisions

So I think I am holding out on writing on all my other topics until it's NaNoWriMo . But Political stuff is neither fiction, nor will it be as relevant for the majority of November. So here it is.

All the issues in the current presidential election can be narrowed down to one question: Who do you trust to make a decision on the right thing to do in a given situation? While quite vague, these concepts of trust and decision making are a deep part of our government and show themselves across the entire spectrum of experiences in our society.

Let's take an obvious example. You find a lost puppy. It happens to be found beneath a sign telling you who to call if you find this puppy. The Right Thing to do here is relatively obvious. Call the number, give the puppy back, everybody is happy. No laws exist to tell you what to do in this situation, because the government trusts that you'll do the Right Thing so much, that it's not even worth their effort to punish you if you don't. Here the answers are easy, the solutions simple, and each individual is trusted with the decision.

Now for a greyer and more touchy example: abortion. Regardless of its legality, trying to determine what the Right Thing to do is in this situation is one that's hotly debated. Somehow, a woman who does not wish to have a child finds herself pregnant. Whether it be from a failed contraceptive or from, heaven forbid, something as grim as sexual assault. Whichever path got her here, she's now in an ugly situation, and she will do whatever she thinks is the Right Thing.

That is, if we trust her to. Pro-Life supporters don't think that this is a decision that she can handle on her own, so they want laws that explicitly say what the Right Thing is (in their case, that she must carry the baby to term) and force her to do that Right Thing. Pro-Choice advocates do trust the woman to consider what's best for her and her child, and let her choose what she believes to be the Right Thing to do.

On a bigger scale, we have things like our current electoral college process for elections. There are really only 538 votes cast in an American election that hold any weight at all on who becomes president. The popular vote, the ideological one vote per person is tallied, but each state decides how the popular vote will influence the electoral vote. Some states have it all for the most popular, some have it split proportionally, and some electoral votes are completely independent of their popular counterpart. This was designed so that, if the populous didn't vote for the Right Thing on election day, the electoral votes could fix it so that the Right Thing did happen and the right candidate was elected.

This is what happened in 2000. The popular vote determined Al Gore to be the best man for the job, but apparently everyone who thought that was the Right Thing was wrong. Phew. That was a close one.

And with another election in front of us, every issue is another version of this question of trust. Do you trust the banks to regulate themselves and only give loans to folks who can pay them back? Do you trust agencies & corporations to provide equal treatment to same-sex couples as they do heterosexual couples?  Do you trust employers to give equal opportunity and equal pay to women as they do men?

Whoever we elect this year will be in the position to make these decisions. I think Obama will choose what I view to be the Right Thing in these situations. Substantially moreso than McCain. I can only hope that as a nation, we decide this strong enough to make sure the electoral votes agree that this is the Right Thing to do.

More time, less time.

I'm definitely not doing as much after work nowadays. It used to be I
had a crazy social schedule. Mon night salsa, Tues night Thai food,
wed night puzzle, thur night baking, Friday night unwinding. And amid
all that I had energy and focus to work on my website.

But I don't have most of that to do after work anymore. In fact, I
really just en up working a bit more because of it. So when I get home
it's hard to work on the stuff that I've already spent all day working
on. And fir some reason blogging doesn't have the same expressive
relief it once did, so that fallen by the wayside as well.

Which is sad. I really do have some great ideas of things I want to
write and things for my website.

Maybe I'm just saving it all up for NaNoWriMo.

Idea seeds

There are a couple of things that ive wanted to write about, but the
time has escaped me. When there is time, hopefully I can flesh out my
views on:

Communication.
Gender and minority issues.
Things I unequivocally enjoy.
Trust: personally and in the media.
Family: birthright or social function?
The future of the Internet.

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I can remember of the
top of my head. I'll refer back to this list when I want to write
about something but need an idea seed.