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August 23 Dueling BanjosOne of the joys of emigrating after reaching adulthood is to learn all the cool stuff locals already know. To an extreme it is good comedy, to the other extreme it is no fun.
My list of big hits includes reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It was funny, silly and throughout enjoyable. Reading The Catcher in Rye was very disturbing: I almost had a claustrophobia attack reading it. On my list of misses was watching Deliverance. It is a depressive, escalating movie that shows a weekend adventure turn into something no one talks about anymore. But they do it in a way that brings the audience together - in a twisted way it is a masterpiece.
One scene from Deliverance that is worth watching is the dueling banjos. It inspired a lot of other movies and pop culture, including something way funnier.
August 22 Killing Time and Online PersonaI have read that companies large and small are more and more searching online for job candidates background information. It is a clear reminder that anything you do on the internet is public. Public as a sidewalk stroll or, depending on your popularity, public as a celebrity. After all your internet persona is the edited essence of what you think is interesting about you, not an objective assessment. More or less like what we know about celebrities are the edited essence of who the public would like them to be. Most of them are probably different than we perceive them and most likely not as interesting. Even Angelina.
I started wrinting online for kicks, not to push a message. I try to structure my text more formally than most simply because I can. I should probably relax a bit and do a haiku.
Now for something completely different, a sample of my favorite time killing distractions:
and now for the bext...
Ah, and if you are a company recruiter, my review was great this year :)
August 18 The Death of a CaturritaI have nothing better to write about, and I remembered this story talking to friends over lunch today, so here it goes. A caturrita is a small green bird that looks like a miniature parrot. It cannot talk, but it is quite intelligent for a bird. My mother used to have one many years ago and, surprise, surprise, it is dead. I'm not very good with creating suspense with titles. I’m not very good writing either, but that doesn’t stop me.
We used to live in a two story house with a large backyard. The sides of the house were very close to the property line, something like 2ft away. It was a corner house and our only side-neighbor was a burned down house. The little caturrita was used to fly from a second story window to a small tree on the backyard, next to the laundry room, and wait there picking fruit until my mother went downstairs.
When the neighbors started fixing the house, the construction crew fixed the fences and put a dog there. Not a huge dog, mind you, just one that would make enough noise to alert them if someone tried to steal their tools or construction materials.
One day we opened the second story window, the caturrita started its flight down to the backyard tree, but saw the dog and changed its flight plan mid-air. It landed right in front of the dog on our neighbor’s yard.
It was the first time the bird saw a dog, and it was very curious. Apparently it was the first time the dog saw a caturrita too, and it was terrified. So for 30 seconds we were screaming from the second floor window, the very curious caturrita walking towards the dog and a terrified dog walking backwards.
The dog hit its butt on the back wall and let single “woof” out. Pluft - the caturrita fell flat on its back. Heart attack. When we got there the dog was sniffing the bird with some kind of “oh my! I did that” look. I don’t think it ever touched the caturrita.
August 06 Shipping CyclesWhen we finish a piece of software and deliver it to customers we call it "shipping". Upper management loves to ship immediatly before the annual performance review, for obvious reasons. It is very unfortunate that our yearly review closes in July and we see the money in September.
Microsoft development center is located in Redmond, Washington. We have three months of Fall and three months of Winter like all other temperate places, but here that means rain. It rains, and it rains, and it rains. Never a downpour, just a constant gray agony. The lack of sunlight causes seasonal affective disorder, a type of endemic depression. When the summer is ending the number of suicides spike, probably for the same reason Sunday nights are not fun, just in a larger scale. I'm feeling lazy, so you'll have to find the statistics yourself.
The other half of the year (Spring and Summer) are nice. It still cold and rainy during most of Spring, but Summer is actually great. Too bad the annual review closes in July and we see the money in September. So we waste summer writing code and enjoy the miserable weather the rest of the year. A couple of folks that are with the company a long time told me this place was picked for the tax savings, distance from Silicon Valley (to increase retention), and because it is so boring that working is actually fun compared to other options. Unless you're a mountain goat, but I diverge.
A pretty cheap way to improve morale would be moving the annual review to February. And the whole company South. Or North, to Canada. Well, they could start with the review thing. August 02 I Could Write About BlahMy last six weeks have been extremely busy and I practically have no time to write anything. I cannot keep up with my own work. So this blog is left without updates.
It is not really a shortage of ideas or lack of enthusiasm. I do have lots of ideas I'd love to write about, but my short term memory is not migrating to long term memory and when I sit down to write it is gone. Like that husband that went to Home Depot to buy new lamps and comes back home four hour later with a power drill and a new barbecue grill. And no lamps, but only his wife notices.
I tought I had something smart to write about lack of sleep, but I remembered I have to go out and buy curtains. Oh, wait, it is 9:30pm. Errr...
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