There's nothing quite like lemonade on a warm day. Would probably be better if it were sunnier, but it's still pretty warm out. Not entirely sure what possessed me to go out and get some lemonade, but I'm not regretting this decision. The Te Cafe internet is also, not terribly surprisingly, a bit faster than in my apartment.

Let's talk about the Underground Tour, since it's probably more interesting than the random bugs and codefixes I'm dealing with at work.

For the first third of the tour, I was mostly helping Nicole unfurl the KGB banner in appropriate places. Like the top of Gesling when the tour was on the football field, or the rotunda when the tour walked by Maggie Mo. This was somewhat frantically paced, really, because the tour moves fast now. Very, very fast.

For the second third of the tour, I mostly watched. This part was primarily the fence stories and the Confuse-a-Bagger(Becca) story. Extra bonus: the Confuse-a-Becca story got some help in the telling from the actual Becca. I knew that was going to happen in advance, but it was a nice touch, since she filled in some details that were missing from the versions told in the other tours.

And the last third was mostly spent standing next to the smoking charcoal chimney, making sure we had coals ready for the barbeque at the end. The coals were ready (woah!) a few minutes before the tour ended. There wasn't any food there yet, though. And the small group of people I gathered to hit the office for the other supplies (thanks Dannel, Kempy) didn't bring back any cups. More or less exactly when the burgers showed up, the tour arrived. I don't even think the first burger had been on the grill for a minute before some freshman came crashing (literally) into the gravel by the fence.

This last part also encompassed my good, absent-minded blunder of the evening. I meant to call Carolyn, to figure out if she'd dispatched people to get burgers yet (since I was standing by the grill on my own). Except I called carmen! instead. And apparently called her carmen!, but still took a couple of minutes to realize this. Whoops.

I cooked some of the burgers too, though they had a disturbing tendency to fall apart and turn into mush. Especially the veggie burgers. Though I didn't last too long in that role, because the grill was very, very warm, and I hadn't eaten anything in a long time, and the smoke was getting to me. It's bad when you, hours later, lie down to go to bed and you can feel the smoke grit behind your eyelids.

And eventually helped clean up, and walked with a limping Nicole up to Squill to get ice cream. Didn't end up actually eating any of that, but whatever. I was more amused by the dude who pulled up next to us to ask for directions (why do people think I know how to get places?). He chided me for stuttering, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to send him to shadyside via squill, or to tell him to turn around, but eventually he was directed, and may have gotten to where he was going. Shortly after that, drunken girls in a car yelled out "HOOOOKER" at Nicole. Which isn't much of a surprise, given her costume for the Tour. But it is an interesting contrast to all the random crap I've had yelled at me by drunken students in cars.

Yes, my whole evening really was about this coherent. I'm pretty sure the smoke was affecting me more than I thought at the time. Much more. I was very out of it.

Oh well. Time to come up with something to write about that isn't the Tour.

Some thoughts for the day, and a bit of explanation about my twitter feed, if you read that.

The joke that just kept getting funnier was this: Our VP of Development sent out an e-mail saying our normal dev meeting today was going to be a discussion of ergonomic cleaning techniques, because we've implemented a kitchen duty plan until we hire a new receptionist. The whole dev team knew it was a joke, though it wasn't, largely, very funny.

Until the meeting today,when the head of QA shows up, because she thought the e-mail was serious. She seemed slightly upset when she left.

I just can't imagine anyone seeing an e-mail like that and not realizing it was a joke. Especially not from our VP, who is prone to making terrible jokes like this all the time... (so my coworkers tell me, at least).


As for software development, failing to override important methods can be bad. Especially when you build and ship tons of code based around that failure, because it becomes very hard to fix problems associated with it.

My solution? Redo some code to entirely avoid the issue.I'll have to document the problem, too, because that would be responsible, and potentially beneficial for future developers.


After work I came home, ate cheese and crackers, and thought about Science Fiction Poetry. There really doesn't seem to be much of this sort of thing, and the conclusion I came to about why is that you just don't have the space in a poem to really set up the setting. You've got to stick with elements of science fiction your audience would know, which is probably fairly limited. Might be worth playing with at any rate, but for now it'll just take up headspace when I'm bug-frustrated at work.


I've also been materialistic about books. I really like getting new ones. Maybe eventually I'll get a new bookshelf to put them on.

Apparently "Scattered Thunderstorms" means that it might be about 75, mostly sunny, and with a pleasant breeze. Never let them tell you Pittsburgh weather is all bad...

Other than that,I started the process of performance reviews (well, setting goals for future performance reviews) today. It's kind of like a weird game. I've just done character creation, picking the skills I'm going to need from a big list, some appropriate, some not. Now I just have to, y'know, do things for the next six months, and then we'll rank things. Which probably will not result in much, other than having to start the process again for the next year. This might be the least exciting game ever.

Actually work is going okay. Though it's not always the easiest thing in the world to break your awful senioritis-induced habits. But, at least you really start to appreciate your weekends a hell of a lot more when you don't have homework. And paychecks are pretty sweet.

Finally saw The Dark Knight. Only complaint was that Gotham is not a city you see during the day. Or, not a city you should see during the day.

And that, even with half of the theatre in sweatshirts, I was sweating something fierce.

Today is apparently my lucky day.

Bike shifting is fixed with some readjustment of the derailleur's limit screws. No idea why I didn't fix the problem yesterday when I tried this, but so it goes. (Actually still need to get on the thing and ride for a bit to be sure, but it seems fixed from my elaborate repair stand [flipping it over in my room], and even shifts smoother than it used to.)

New eeepc also has internet access at home (typing on it now), because I realized we've got different encryption than I thought we did.

Of course, I still need to write and mail a rent check, but that's no big deal.

My bike is having problems again.

In fact, it's having exactly the same problem that prompted me to take it in originally.

I can't shift into low gear on the front chain ring. This more or less makes it worthless for what I actually want to do, because hills in standard Pittsburgh weather and the wrong gearing wreck me. Much more energy expended, much more sweat.

I can't tell what's wrong with it, either. Chain rings don't seem sticky or damaged. Chain itself feels good, still probably slightly over-lubed from being in the shop earlier this month. Cables feel tense enough. Adjusting the derailleur seems to be the last option here, unless I want to get rid of the whole thing and get a new one. But adjusting that doesn't help.

Called the shop where I took it a few weeks ago. Looks like two weeks or more, again, if I want to bring it in to them. It's still Summer.

Whatever happened to the magical world I lived in as a kid where the professionals actually do the job right the first time, and relatively quickly?

Nicole is giving me crap about posting poems to LiveJournal. (To be fair, I told her she should. Take that tendency toward extrinsic motivation. Take that.)

( This one's a little awkwardly about sex. )

People tell me I don't post to LiveJournal enough. So I'm going to start this post now, while I'm thinking about it, and maybe continue later.

The weather forecast predicts a few thunderstorms here in Pittsburgh over the next few days, and then back to sunny, hot weather.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's nice outside in the evening when the sun is going down (or has already done so) and it's clear and reasonably cool outside. But the rest of the day is brutal, and I'm tired of sitting in air conditioned rooms and overheating, still feeling all the sweat beading up on my back and my chest.

Been cooking some various things, while trying to stay out of the kitchen. That's easier when Nicole is helping. We made some sort of monstrous zucchini/carrot/corn/spice bread that's actually really good. And other assorted meals.

And there was a bike ride yesterday, around sunset. Only slightly disappointed that the park is basically closed off, but whatever. The grand prix will be gone soon.

...

The heat is apparently making me more cynical than normal. So it goes.

I haven't posted to livejournal in a while... And this one isn't going to be deep and meaningful anyway.

I'm planning on running a 4th Edition one shot in the near future. I'm thinking something like Monday or Tuesday evening, next week if things can be arranged. But I'm flexible on that.

E-mail me or comment here if you might want in.

( And you can click here, if you want more details. )

12:30 used to seem so early.

Now it seems much later. Probably because I need to be awake in six and a half hours.

But I had a headache earlier, and ended up taking a nap because of that. So now I'm awake. And very, very warm.

Dear PNC Bank, why are you so incompetent today?

I just want to figure out what my online banking userID is.

I know it's a number, because you can use the same information for phone banking, but that's about it.

I know that the pnc website says the pnc phone system will help me figure out what it is.

I know the four people I talked to on the pnc phone system each told me to follow the phone menu through some different options.

I know that none of these people could give me the username.

How much do you want to bet that my branch won't be able to give it to me when I go in on Saturday, either?

Edit:

Nevermind. Talked to someone who wasn't incompetent on the next attempt. Lucky me.

I started working today. That's definitely a post worthy experience, I suppose.

My day started off a little rocky, because when you take sleepy medicine (Advil PM, nothing too terrible) to help you fall asleep at 2am, but still have to wake up around 7am, that's just not going to go very well at all.

Of course, the reason why I didn't sleep until 2am was that there was more swing dancing on Sunday, which I went to with Nicole, Hayley, and Ian. It was pleasantly reassuring to not be the only person there who was having some trouble picking things up. Though apparently, despite my hangups and tremendous difficulty hearing the beat in songs, I have "great rhythm". Not joking, somebody totally told me that. Don't remember who, but whatever.

After that was half-price, because it's summer, and we were all hungry. Then walking from Oakland to home by a somewhat circuitous route, so we all split off in different directions at about the same time.

So I took the drugs, fell asleep, that was fine. Woke up in the morning. Snoozed the alarm once or twice. Discovered I could still here the alarm going off because it was ringing in my ears a little bit. Makes it hard to get the most out of your snooze time that way.

Showered. Slacks and a polo shirt. Next time I need to bring reading material for the bus ride (assuming I get a seat).

At work, only a few forms to fill out. The HR person (who is new since I interviewed and such) is out of town, and the dev team has no idea how to fill out relevant forms, so I get to do most of them later.

Spent a million years (four hours) trying to get software set up on my machine (which is a temp machine, until they get me a new laptop). XP needed multiple service packs, SVN repositories with wrong permissions set, eclipse and java just all around being whiny bitches, etc.

Went out to lunch with the UI team. Once CMU grad other than me (from last year, didn't know him at school, and can't remember his name right now). Mandarin Gourmet at fourth and wood. Not terrible food. Not great service.

After lunch I got handed bug reports. Got lost in all the code. Very lost. Though I suppose that's pretty reasonable. Tomorrow I get to learn how drag and drop works in Swing.

I also noticed the bathroom has a funny sign. Apparently smoking in the restroom is worth a $50,000 fine. It says "by Pennsylvania Ordinance" and looks so very official. It's a good thing I don't smoke.

Found out a flurry of 61's hit Fifth and Smithfield around 5:30, so I headed out there a bit before that. Bumped into labbott, who also works downtown, apparently. Caught the end of KGB. Had Indian food. A little too spicy, but wasn't bad. Less annoying than Nicole constantly apologizing for eating all of the rice. Which wasn't annoying anyway.

I walked home, and now I'm enjoying the joys of air conditioning. Well, the box in my window. Until I go to bed to wake up early and do it all again tomorrow, that is.

(Where'd my subjects go? My writing style is odd today.)

Alarm clock test: a little bit failure, a little bit success.

I can totally set an alarm, and have it go off when I want it to. That's good.
But pressing the sleep button instead of snooze (by accident) is bad. Apparently "sleep" is for playing the radio for about an hour while you fall asleep. And the only way to turn off the radio once you've pressed the sleep button is to unplug the whole alarm clock.

Snooze, however, seems to actually work, which means I'll be relying on this thing to wake me up in the morning for work.

Work, starting tomorrow. I keep telling myself it's just like starting a summer job, except it's not just a summer job, and that feels more than a little strange.

My cellphone alarm is consistently failing me. Failing as in I tell it to snooze and then it stubbornly refuses to go off again. Which means I actually need to figure out how the one on my clock works. (Doing an experiment now.)

On the positive side, it's nice and sunny out in the morning now, so getting up early shouldn't be too hard.

Twitter is also failing me. It keeps refusing to show me posts that are more recent than about 30 hours ago. (Wait, now there are some more recent ones, but still big gaps... hmm)

Livejournal is trying to sell me clergy vestments. This is very strange.

The UC info desk also proved pretty useful today, since I needed to buy stamps and send a fax. Hopefully I won't have to send too many faxes in the future, because I'll eventually feel like I shouldn't be using the info desk for this sort of thing, which makes faxing stuff harder.

I also got new pens, which is good, since my last batch of pens is down to a single pen that's running out of ink. Unfortunately they're gel ink pens, and I might be the only person who thinks this is not so great. At least, based on the fact that there are incredibly few non-gel ink pens available in such an illustrious store as Rite-Aid. We'll see how it goes. (My handwriting is currently notably worse, just because the lines the pen makes are thicker).

I miss workshop. I mean, I think I write more now than when I have poetry deadlines, but still. Huge stacks of feedback on poems was entertaining.

(I cheated some on the sestina. This doesn't bother me.)

( a short poem )
-----
( sestina )

Happier thoughts:

I'm drinking lavender lemonade right now. Same place as the hibiscus. I think I like the hibiscus lemonade better.

Unhappy thoughts:

Why is it raining? Why couldn't I figure that out by checking the internet?

Seriously, why is my internet so busted? This has gotten a little crazy.

Edit: Not raining any more. Pouring. I hope jcreed, lea, and chrisamaphone aren't sitting at a bus stop waiting for a bus now... (I bumped into them just outside the tea place).

I'm not going to sleep tonight. Not for several more hours.

And I'm going to tell you why, because it's going to make me feel better, and keep my mind away from where it shouldn't be.

So we'll start at the beginning.

I was already having trouble falling asleep, so I decided to watch something (ran out of new reading material already), which happened to be an episode of House. Anyway, stuff happens, the kid is saved, etc. etc. One of the final scenes, which I'd seen before but not remembered, is the doctors busting into the wall of the kid's bedroom. Tons of termites, swarming out of the walls.

Some of you might see where this is going.

And I'm watching this with headphones, and something touches my knee, just on the side. I think it was probably my headphone cord, but it may have been a bug. I don't know.

I jump up, fling off my headphones. I'm surprised I was lucid enough to do that. I definitely shouted some things like "Hoooooh", "Aaaaah". I threw my chair across the room getting out. I literally ran from the room. (1/3)

That's probably about where I started hyperventilating.

And standing around in my kitchen talking to myself, imagining every slight discoloration on anything to be a bug.

Eventually, I went back to my room. I stood in the hallway outside of my door. I slowly turned the handle, pushed my room door open. And then ran back into the kitchen. (2/3)

But I had to go back, because I needed to get my cell phone, because the internet was out, and I knew I wouldn't get much sleep. I needed to let Nicole know to call me, just in case this messes up my day tomorrow.

So I make my way back to my room. Push in to get my phone. I actually got it this time. And ran screaming again. (3/3) I'd touched some sort of carpet fuzz.

Finally convinced myself I was being dumb, in the kitchen. Texted Nicole (because it's rude to call at 4am, right?). Got back to my room, felt a little better. Found out I had internet again. Decided to post to livejournal, because I need to do something to keep my mind off of my stupid fear.

So, when I say I'm afraid of bugs being on me, I mean it. Now I'm going to stay up doing random things, because I'm still jumping every time I touch something. I don't think I'm going to sleep much at all tonight. If at all.

I bought a silly video game today.

'No More Heroes' for the Wii. My only complaint for now is this: The sound effect volume is very high, but the dialogue volume is very low. So I need to turn it up to the point where decapitation is almost ear-splitting, and dialogue is understandable.

(Maybe I'll play at like 4 in the morning, if I can't sleep again. I'm sure someone in our apartment building would love to hear distorted death screams at 4am).

Maybe I should say what the game's about, since I'm talking about decapitation and all. It's a very stylized slasher game. Anime freak ex professional wrestler tries to pick up a woman at a bar, she says she'll sleep with him... if he gets to be the top rank assassin in the "association". Graphics and audio are very reminiscent of old video games. Pizza restores health. Everything's super pixelated. Your super-power duration is shown by a tiger sprite running towards a flag. When he gets it, you're out of super-powers.

Mostly, it seems to be a satire of violent video games. This idea that eating food miraculously makes you healthy. Hordes of worthless thugs to mow down (I had to knock down a row of pitchers by hitting a baseball they threw back at them. Heh.) in fanciful ways (decapitation, cut in half in multiple ways, &c.). Ludicrous boss fights and enough gore to make Tarantino proud.

I'm enjoying it.

Other than that, I got a savings account at PNC today. That was easy, if long.

I also spent half an hour in the post office, picking up a package. Bitter lady at the Squirrel Hill post office had a customer who did not understand what she was talking about. She was told about thirty times (once a minute for half an hour) that she couldn't insure one of the packages she was sending. Never quite clicked. Eventually bitter lady just sort of forced her into actually sending the packages so she could get on with her life. The other woman at the counter was helping a very old lady fill out a form, very, very slowly. Multiple people in line just gave up and left, I saw them walking around after I'd finished. The rest were making jokes about why postal employees go crazy, or talking about the confused woman behind her back. Loudly too. I'm surprised she didn't hear them.

Tomorrow I go to buy boring clothing items. No, seriously. Socks, underwear, undershirts. Nothing quite like that to remind me that, yes, I am now financially independent. Weird, man.