The Penalty Box

There’s nothing like thinking you’ve lost your cell phone, spending two hours searching for it and finding it sitting in the grass outside your place of residence because the stupid belt clip broke off of the carrying case. It’s amazing how, despite never using anywhere close to full minutes of my plan, my life becomes so much more inconvenient without a phone. There’s also the irritation of the prospect of needing to spend money on a new phone because I have a year and half left on my contract.
The ironic part is that yesterday I was researching how I could back up my contacts from my phone onto an old Palm Pilot I have that I’m not longer using for anything.

Lesson learned: don’t rely on belt clips that come with the phone. It’s going into my pocket now.

• Do not leave a mess when you are done. I understand that you have to cut pipe and that it is a bit of a messy job. Just clean it up afterwards. Do not leave pipe shavings and sawdust in my kitchen.
• I am not here to entertain you. If I am watching playoff hockey, that does not give you the cue to talk over the announcer to make small talk. I don’t care that your new truck is broken. I don’t care that you hate your landlord. Fix my sink, that’s your job.
• If you don’t have a part to finish the job, get it. If the hardware store is closed, get it the next day. Home Depot/Rona does not close on a Sunday. You have not finished a job, so you better make it a priority to finish it. I don’t care if you’ve had a bad day, you’ve made my weekend bad by leaving a leaky sink.
• If you are too busy to finish this job, you should not have accepted it in the first place. Learn to manage your time better.
• There’s more to being a plumber than pipes. There’s customer relations too. Not answering your phone when you have an unfinished job is unprofessional. If you do not wish to deal with customers, hire someone to do that for you. If you cannot afford that, then deal with it and stop acting like a thirteen year old pissant.
• Don’t get all Mike Holmes on me saying the builders did a crappy job with the pipes when you can’t even make a sink stop leaking. There are no specialty parts that you need to order. Stop making excuses.
• Don’t complain that jobs are always more complicated than you expected. It just means you’re unprepared.
• FINISH. THE. JOB.

It’s now been the better part of a week that the kitchen sink is leaking due to old pipes. Once I get the name of the company (he’s self-employed) from my landlord, I will edit this post to inform everyone to never contract the services of this plumber.

Edit: The name of the company is Precision Plumbing.  Tack BC on the end of that, add a .ca extension and you have his website.  I’m not linking it because he doesn’t deserve any help on his Google ranking. For extra lulz, here’s some quotes from his “guarantee” section of his site:

We guarantee your home or business with be treated with the utmost care and respect while completing your project.
We guarantee all excess material or left over parts will be removed from site with minimal or no cost to the home or business owner.
We guarantee all our work will be done right the first time and strive to maintain our name in quality.

Oh yeah, he ended up leaving the dirty pipes behind too. He just said to throw them into the garbage can. So yeah, don’t use this guy. Ever. Tell your friends.

One of the constants in life, aside from death and taxes, is employee turnover. There have been people who have left my company before, but it has been a while since someone working longer than me has left. Work has been a little crazy these last few months, and while the craziness has not affected me directly, it has had some ripple effects throughout the company. I suspect that craziness has caused the departure of one co-worker today. Politics rose its ugly head, and how each type of person handled the situation differed depending on the position. Despite my bias in favour of my developer peers, I have been able to observe how the situation arrived at its current destination. Change is most definitely needed, yet it may require a genius feat of social engineering to pull it off considering the number of strong personalities at play.

Another co-worker decided to take a leave of absence to go sailing for four months. I don’t know if he’s actually coming back, although I hope he is. I’m not sure if I could ever take that much time off to travel; there’s something comforting about a daily routine of work that allows for some semblance of order. Not having any idea what the next day could bring disturbs that large part of my brain that encompasses my obsessive compulsiveness and organization. It’s true that the unknown and the unexpected add to the quality of life, but I don’t think I could take that much unknown at once. Of course, my co-worker has been at the company for more than five years now, so this could very well be an introspective to help him decide where he wishes to go next. Maybe those two GPS units he’s taking along will help him out.

Now that I’ve been working a couple of years, people often ask me how long I’ll be staying at my current job. I find that as long as boredom does not set in, and there’s some kind of fulfillment to the work I do, I don’t feel a need to change jobs. Of course, other factors play in, but that’s the general gist of it. Changes within the company itself, whether they come from company direction or employee changes, generally provide new challenges and opportunities. I suppose there’s a bit of unknown and certainty in all of that, both in the long and short term respectively.

Change causes adaption and re-ordering. Guess I have some sorting to do. Wonder if I can do it in O(log n).

Wanna feel old?

Seriously? The Matrix is 10 years old? Mr. Plow is 17? The Knucklepuck Guy is 30 years old??!! Aaaaaaaaagh…

Who else got stuffed to the gills because you got told, “you’re still growing, you should eat more”? Yeah, I’m growing, but only sideways now. I’m pretty sure 6 or 7 creatures on the food chain got whacked for the meal I ate yesterday (not including the large pile of shrimp).  It was a dinner for 8. Hooray for leftovers though!

Anybody crazy enough to go to a Chinese restaurant over the weekend?

My co-worker and I had a discussion today about how certain people are really good at discretely paying a cheque without anyone noticing until it’s too late. I commented that this was fairly prevalent in Chinese culture (the term “cage match” adequately describes some family dinners, particularly if the family is from out of town). He mentioned that he has seen it amongst Koreans as well, leading me to wonder if this is just a Southeast Asian thing. He said it’s something “whiteys” do as well (for note, he’s white, so I assume he knows what he’s talking about), but generally they fall into three general categories:

1. Split evenly among X, where X is the number of people attending the meal.
2. Everyone chips in what they owe.
3. Everyone takes turns paying for the meal, rotating on some pre-determined basis.

Most of my experience with my western friends falls into category 2. A corollary to this method is what my friends call “The Beer Economy.” The way it works is if you owe Jack some form of monetary compensation, whether it be a meal or a small loan to buy something, you can pay Jack back by buying him beer, where beer is generally beer but can also take the form of some other thing when going out somewhere (movie ticket, shots, dinner, et al). A new method introduced by my co-worker is the “Credit Card Lottery,” which is an offshoot of category 3. This is where everyone puts their credit card into the bill folder and asks the waiter/waitress to randomly select a card to pay for the meal. A novel idea, but it takes a fairly long time for it to even out amongst the group should it grow beyond a small party. Still, it’s a safer form of gambling that provides entertainment and food.

Chinese bill payments are nowhere near as civil. Arguments never turn maliciously violent, but there have been occasions of wrestling. I have also seen moves that would put the Harlem Globetrotters to shame. Reasons used in arguments include (but are not limited to):

• “I’m older than you.”
• “Your kids are out of the house.”
• “I’m staying at your place.”
• “You’re staying at my place, so I’m hosting you.”
• “You have kids.”
• “It’s my birthday.”
• “It’s your birthday.”
• “You’re a growing boy/girl.” (This happens as long as there’s someone older than you)
• “I know the manager.”
• “You’re a student.”

A couple happen with my western friends (namely “it’s your birthday” and “you’re a student”). Honestly though, I’m pretty sure most of the arguments are a competition on who can be the best cheque ninja. After all, it just makes for a good story to tell how you ninja’d the cheque from your family/friends. Some of the better ones I’ve seen are “distract your target with a cute baby while you go pay” and “prepay with cash before the meal so when the bill comes, it’s just change.” Paying on the way to the bathroom? That’s child’s play compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen my relatives do.

If you’ve got a good cheque ninja story, do tell.

Recently at work I’ve been whittling down the “To Do” list that has been building up.  You know, the one that has items in a perpetual state of “I’ll do it when I have time,” and then you seemingly never have time.  Priorities shift depending on the circumstances; some items move up and some move down.  Having a “To Do” list isn’t a bad thing; it helps keep us organize and provides a sense of order.

But you know those things you wish you could do, but you never think you have the time for? It turns out, you probably do, but you just don’t realize it.  There are many things in our daily lives that we do that, little by little, consume far too much of our time than is good for us.  Therefore, in conjunction with your “To Do” list, you should also come up with a “Not To Do” list.  This list should consist of small things that you do too often that you can cut down on, and the world will not end.  Here are a few of mine:

1. Check e-mail at scheduled points of the day, or to a maximum amount: I used to periodically check my e-mail, up to several times an hour.  This led me to get distracted far too many times from the task I really ought to be doing, which would then delay other tasks on my “To Do” list.  The problem is that by checking my e-mail so often, once an e-mail came in, I felt compelled to answer it or deal with it in some way (file it, tag it, etc).  Was everything urgent enough to need that much attention? Not even close.  But little by little, e-mail began to consume more and more of my time.   Deal with your e-mail in batches; it’s much more efficient, and you don’t needlessly distract yourself.  Once you get distracted, it takes time to re-focus, time that could’ve been spent being productive on your task at hand.
2. As a caveat to the first one, don’t check your e-mail first thing in the morning or just before you go to bed: Wait until you’ve woken up (or at least exited that zombie state) for the former.  Dealing with e-mail first thing in the morning breaks up your routine, shifts priorities and throws a monkey wrench into the plans you have.  This is all part of the distractions that make you lose focus and cause you to spend time re-focusing.  Take care of at least one critical thing first (aside from morning coffee/tea) and then move onto your e-mail.  As for the latter, you’ll just cause yourself to think too much about whatever comes in.  Having your brain churn that much just before you’re going to sleep isn’t going to give you a decent night’s rest.  Deal with it in the morning; you’ll exit zombie state faster and you’ll sleep better.
3. Learn the difference between rambling and productive small talk: If you’re like me, you’re not a fan of ramblers.  Idle chit chat ends up in a conversation about nothing and prevents you from doing anything useful/fun.  Starting every conversation with “How’s it going?” seems to be a reflex among a lot of people I know, especially co-workers.  I know they don’t actually want to know, because that question inevitably leads to what I’m working on, and it’s generally not remotely interesting to them.  The annoying times are when the question is asked in passing; if you’re not willing to stop to have a conversation, don’t ask.  However, corporate ladder climbing and networking for jobs involves small talk, so it’s good to learn the difference between productive small talk that will land you opportunities and unproductive rambling that goes nowhere.  One greases social gears for life in general, the other is just a waste of time.
4. Pick your battles: In a perfect world, you could fight for everything you believe to be right and win, even down to the smallest thing.  Dealing fellow humans changes that.  Messy complicated issues like politics weigh down what is right, where “right” can be subjective (ex. how often you clean, do pens have to be 90 degrees to pads of paper, should corporal punishment be allowed in parenting).  Learning how to let some of the smaller things slide can remove a lot of stress from your life, and consequently you can be a little happier not getting mad over them.  Other times, it just isn’t appropriate to fight battles because even if you win that battle, you lose the war.  Anyone who has worked in any place, whether it be an office or lab, for a nontrivial amount of time knows what I’m talking about.  Don’t get me wrong, venting to a confidant always helps to release some pent up frustrations, but fighting every battle leaves you weary, unhappy and worse off overall.  Pick the ones really worth fighting for, take back the time spent on the ones that aren’t.
5. Stop checking your feed reader so much: I have gone from obsessively checking my e-mail to obsessively checking my feed reader.  Google Reader has made it much easier to group all of my RSS feeds together.  It also piles up much quicker because many of my feeds update frequently, particularly the news feeds.  There’s something about seeing more than 50 unread items that bugs me, but this is something I’m working on.  In a lot of cases, looking at your feed reader so much is worse than checking your e-mail; it can be like Wikipedia surfing…one good article leads to another, and then another, and then another.  All of a sudden, 2 hours have slipped by and you think to yourself, “Oh crap…there was stuff I needed to do in those two hours.  Eh, maybe just one more.”

The best part of a “Not To Do” list? You can keep doing the stuff on it and accomplish something all the time.

My day started out with a bad night’s sleep.  Hooray, it’s Monday and I’m tired.  Being tired meant staying in bed a little too long trying to convince my body to do what my brain told it to do.  This threw off my schedule enough that I was a few minutes late getting out the door.  I get about a block out before the section of my brain that calculates temperature tells me that it’s a bit chilly (it’s about 10 C, windy and I’m wearing a short sleeve shirt).  Damn.  Welp, too late to go back for a jacket, I need to catch my bus.  Unfortunately, events conspired to have me arrive at the crosswalk of Hastings and Sperling just as the wrong light turns red, which means mashing the walk button won’t have any effect for a couple of minutes.  End result? I miss my bus.

And another.

As I silently curse the Crosswalk Gods, the light finally changes and I cross the street to watch yet another bus take off.  The next bus is not crowded and just happens to have a driver with a lead foot.  For gas and brake.  Trying to prevent my head from smashing into the pole in front of me meant I could not sleep on the way to work, but at least I got a seat.

I get to work and a script flaked out over the weekend.  Yay, stats triage.  Fixing it takes the better part of the day, and when I almost think I’ve got it, a bug crops up and I spend the next two hours poking at code, trying to make it go.  Final cause? I used the parent object instead of the inheireted object and the parent object’s version of the function didn’t rotate an array’s contents.  I was rather close to writing an ugly workaround hack that my co-workers likely would’ve tarred and feathered me for.

On the way home, I forget my wallet on my desk, prompting a mad dash back to the elevator to go up and down 27 floors.  Then there’s a conspiracy theorist on the bus rambling about how the government was getting into all of our private data.  The rant is sparked by the bus driver asking him where he was going in order to determine if he had to pay one or two zones.  “I’ll go where I want to go, I don’t have to tell you where I’m going.  What are you, my mom? Gonna hold my hand? I’ll go where I wanna go.”  Way to show the maturity of a 14 year old girl and convince no one that you’re “sticking it to the man.”  I see your intelligence peaking at the level of “tampon wrapper.”

And so it happened, tonight was my night to cook.  I managed to mistime the cooking of the stir fry, almost forgot to cook the rice and forgot to put more oil on the frying pan, which resulted in some bread crumbs from the pork catching on fire.  Fortunately, I saved the pork chop and put out the fire, but not before some smoke drifted out of the kitchen, prompting a few curious roommates to wonder what the hell was going on.  I guess it’s a good thing the kitchen smoke detector is unplugged, as steam seems to set it off.  Apparently dinner tasted fine, so I guess in the end it’s not so much presentation as it is taste.  I won’t be trying out for Iron Chef anytime soon, that’s for sure.

In the end, it wasn’t a terrible day, just not the best of days.  Perhaps it brought some entertainment to you, dear reader. I’m just really glad our beer fridge is stocked.

I spent Canada’s 141st birthday at Granville Island, taking in the sights and sounds of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival.  My tastes in music have morphed over time; I find I enjoy the small 3-6 piece ensembles a lot more than the booming big band music that first attracted me to jazz music.  Don’t get me wrong, I still love the off-beat bass pulses of Dave Brubeck and the eclectic piano riffs of Count Basie, but there’s something more intimate about a jazz trio or quartet that lets you connect more with the music.  Besides, if you can do that while consuming some awesome beer in the Granville Island Brewery Taproom, all the better!

As I was walking around today between sets at the Taproom, I stumbled upon an actual honest-to-God dixieland band, complete with tux shirts and bow ties.  Once I process the pictures off of my camera, I’ll post them.  The harmonies, brisk bass line and some wicked cool clarinet riffs made for quite an interesting set.  This kind of thing makes me annoyed that I forgot about the Jazz Festival until mid-week last week.  All these different styles of music, whether it be new kinds of fusion or revived styles, come together at the Jazz Festival, and it really is pretty neat to see and hear them all.  Next year I’ll have to write myself a reminder so I can catch stuff like the Gastown Jazz that happened two weekends ago.  There’s also usually really good groups performing at the Roundhouse.

On a funnier note, I saw Gordon Campbell walking with who I assumed was his daughter when I was heading out of Granville Island to the bus stop.  In a way, I was kind of surprised he didn’t have some kind of security contingent with him.  For one, he’s the premier, so it’s probably in the budget.  Today was also the day that the gas tax kicked in, adding another 2.4 cents per litre to the price of gasoline.  Then again, the worst thing ever done to a Canadian politician was a pie to the face, so I guess he really didn’t have a whole lot to worry about.