The Penalty Box

Say hello to December.  It’s entered with a profound statement in the form of a small blanket of snow.  Something to remind me that while I do live in a temperate rainforest, it certainly can do whatever the hell it wants sometimes.  Then, just as quickly, we said goodbye to it; the good ol’ reliable west coast rain came to wash it away, further reinforcing the fact that Vancouver has two types of weather: “rain” and “about to rain.”  Occasionally there’s “needs some bloody rain,” but that’s rare.

Say hello to Christmas shopping.  Technically I’ve started.  I have a few things left to get, which means I need to sharpen my elbows.  Gotta love how everyone gets into the holiday spirit by being as rude as possible in the overcrowded ratholes they call “malls.”

Say hello to Christmas parties.  Yep, another year, another company Christmas party.  It was really well done; the office manager at my company is really good at her job.  Reminds me of how Noah used to organize major events in a relatively short amount of time while somehow managing to keep his studies going.  Well okay, maybe Noah didn’t study all that much, but he’s bloody brilliant enough to keep up his GPA.  Or at least make it sound like he knows what he’s talking about.  Anyways, the party was good.  I would’ve said awesome, but I didn’t win anything, and so perpetuated my horrible luck at any kind of draw/raffle/prize contest.  No matter, a good time was had by all, complete with a few developers kickin’ it old school on the dance floor.  It seems the crazier types are the ones with kids.  Not surprising when you think about it.  I know I drove my parents nuts.

Say hello to scheduling madness.  With family events up the wazoo and my sister coming home to visit, along with a few friends who have exiled themselves to the nether regions (read: armpits) of this country also visiting, it’ll prove to be a rather hectic latter half of December.  Speaking of family, I still need to find something for the family Secret Santa gift exchange (done with aunts, uncles, cousins etc).  Shopping for family is hard.

Goodbyes are hard.  Today was the last day of one of my co-workers, John.  He’s leaving to follow his entrepreneurial spirit and run his site Platerage.  Had a few beers with him after work with some other co-workers.  Getting to know some of your co-workers outside of work is a healthy exercise in my mind, helps you work together better.  Unless you work with jerks, and then it can’t really be helped.  It wasn’t until yesterday that I felt like I was in a normal corporate company though.  I couldn’t really relate to Dilbert or The Office with my job, and that felt weird as a programmer.  But then, the HR manager gave a little goodbye present to John: a mouse encased in Jello.  If you watched The Office, you know what I mean.  If you didn’t, well, it’s still pretty damn funny.  I figure I’d give his site another plug as he heads off into the land of self-employment.  Perhaps readership of about two dozen (I round up okay? ) of this blog can make use of it.
It’s also almost time to say goodbye to 2007.  A calendar year without school, the growth of a small company to a medium sized company and just the learning experience of working with people was pretty cool.  The aspect of human interaction is still quite fascinating to me.  It’s interesting to see how people react to each other and to learn about entirely different sides of people you never see, whether you are the cause of their actions or not.  Maybe I should’ve done a masters in HCI.  Ah well, maybe if my career gets stagnant I’ll consider it.  Right now the problem solving part of my job is holding my interest quite well.
Say goodbye to another week.  Hello weekend and maybe actually getting off my lazy butt and going Christmas shopping.

This year I went minimalist.  Why? Because I’m lazy.  Finding out what other people come up with is pretty cool though.  The following are some of the costumes that showed up at work:

• Flames fan in Vancouver (ketchup stains as blood with a “Kick me” sign taped to the back)
• Facebook (a blue book with a hole in it, put over the face)
• Squeegee kid
• Paperbag princess
• Duck beauty pageant winner
• Blackberry

Our office manager threatened bad makeup and fairy costumes on anyone that didn’t dress up.  A few people called her bluff, and, well…nothing happened.  Methinks some more bluff calling is in order.  I didn’t call her bluff, but I did find a way around it without actually having to wear an itchy wig or an uncomfortable mask.  Behold my costume:

I was called a brat.  I claimed lateral thinking.  I did stop short of “thinking outside the box” and “changing the paradigm” though.  I probably would’ve gotten hit if I said that.

Two things cross my mind as we stroll into November.  One: How the crap is it November already? Two: Hooray, BSG movie coming soon!

I went to John’s birthday party, one of my co-workers, yesterday.  It was interesting to see a few of them outside of the office.  He’s a big scotch guy and I got to try some Glenlivet and Jameson.  The Glenlivet didn’t have as much flavour as I’d like, but the Jameson was pretty good.  I like it better than Crown.

John’s got a pretty nice pad downtown, within spitting distance of GM Place.  I was amused by the fake fireplace that produces fake fire.  The architecture was done fairly well; despite it being a one bedroom place, the design makes it feel a little bigger than it actually is.  Heck, he’s got enough space for one of those L-shaped couches (waaaaant…but one like Curtis’, which you can lean back on like a La-Z-Boy).

Watching your co-workers get drunk off of vodka and scotch can be a rather entertaining affair.  John was getting kinda pink by around 11pm.  Inevitably, a few of us ended up talking about work, which kinda sucks looking back on it because I like to leave work at work if possible in a social environment.  Ah well, it was a good time conversing with people with some good scotch.  I find interacting with people in different environments than the norm really brings out other things you wouldn’t find out otherwise.

Alas, I would be amiss if I didn’t pimp John’s pet project: PlateRage.  I actually find it pretty cool, and The Province recently did an article on it.  It’s a pretty novel idea.  People love to hop on the user generated content bandwagon these days.  I don’t drive much, but I imagine those that are unfortunate to drive to work every day could make very good use of this site.

How do you measure, a year…and we’ll stop there.

So…a full year officially of me in the workforce.  It’s strange how when you’re in school, some semesters seem to drag on forever.  Long, arduous, and, depending on the professor in some cases, torturous.  Projects and homework and exams didn’t seem to end, they just kept coming.  Days were long, nights were longer; sometimes it got to the point where you didn’t know what you wanted more: beer or sleep.  Indulge too much of either, and the next project is behind schedule and, before you know it, you’re totally boned.  Indulge too much of both and you end up puking in a trashcan or two as you stumble your way towards Shadow Day, a delightful experience for those prospective high school students looking to choose their post secondary institution (not to name names, but his name rhymes with Boa Fadams).  Mind you, I’m working with a rather small sample set; most of the people I associate with of whom I know their academic (mis)adventures are either in computing science or are those crazy wackjobs that go to grad school.  Party on Garth.
Yet when one is working full-time, days seem shorter and nights achieve some level of normalcy.  By that I mean it’s difficult to make it through the day at work hung over with the same ability to keep down food as a pregnant woman in the morning.  Unless, of course, you have a job as a Wal-mart greeter.  Those people are suspiciously drowsy and slow moving.  Don’t discriminate because they’re old, you ageists.  But I digress.  Work tends to make days go by faster.  There’s some sense of routine, yet not routine (if you have a job you like anyway) that alters the perception of time passage.  Of course it doesn’t help that my roommate has already started Christmas shopping.  Yeah, I know.  Yes, I said the same thing.

Perhaps the fast-paced nature of the working world is supposed to make us think about what’s really important in life.  I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to come to this kind of conclusion until I’m approaching middle age, then compensate for missing this realization by purchasing a fast car to impress the chicks.  Then again, I’ve always managed to overthink into the future and become far too practical.  Damn, I guess I won’t be getting that fast car.  At least not on impulse.  Hmmm…there’s a Magic 8-ball sitting on the shelf, maybe I should ask it.  Nah, the thing’s rigged anyways.

It’s good to take a step back once in a while, shake your head clear of the stress and worries that come with life and work (or school if you still have it.  Suckers.), and contemplate what things you hold important.  Family? Friends? Love? That gorgeous new Lexus droptop that would look really sweet with a hot little number in a red dress sitting in the passenger seat? (Hey, I don’t pretend to know what some mathematicians do in their spare time, but anthropomorphizing pi seems right up their alley.  Right, Bishnu?) Then go outside and step on some flowers.  Little bastards cause all those pesky allergies, plus there’s the bonus of stamping relieving some of that built-up stress.

Speaking of some important stuff, hockey’s back.  Anyone got Center Ice that I can mooch off of when the Canucks have a pay-per-view game?

I’ve been finished classes and exams for a year now, and it’s a rather odd feeling.  It really hasn’t felt like a year has passed since I’ve completed all necessary requirements for my BSc.  Yet in less than two months, it’ll be a year since I’ve convocated and a year since I’ve started working full time.  I’ve moved out and not starved.  I’ve actually started thinking about RRSPs, a down payment for a place of my own and opened an investment portfolio.  Growing up feels really weird.

Recently I read an article on the Internet about how the 20s are the new teens.  More and more, young adults are doing all the stupid shit they should’ve gotten out of their system when they were 16.  Instead, drug experimentation, DUIs and general asshattery has spilled into early to mid 20s.  While there haven’t exactly been ideal role models for twenty-somethings, the party lust hasn’t died as quickly as previous generations.  The rebellious “rage against the man” phase has seemingly extended further into adulthood.  I don’t know if parents have turned into a generation of wimps or what, but it sounds as if a lot of people my age are still rather carefree.  Undoubtedly it has something to do with an average university education taking a lot longer than 4 years.

I just wonder where the hell these people end up, because there’s an awful lot of them.  There’s only so many burger flippers and manual labour to go around.  And how have they not flunked out yet already? Then again, to get into SFU Computing Science these days you need something idiotically low like 75%, a far cry from the 93% for my year.  Catering to the stupid is a disturbing trend, and only goes to show that natural selection doesn’t apply to humans.  We’re doing a remarkably good job at protecting the stupid and weak.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve missed out on anything, having somewhat grown up rather quickly.  I won’t ever get drunk due to medical reasons.  I no longer have the energy, or will, to party to dawn.  Popular destinations to “go out” to (like clubs) appear more annoying and useless than fun.  I feel more like a 35 year old in a club than a 23 year old.  I take a look at what people my age do, and I wonder how it’s fun or how they don’t think about the mounds of debt they are heaping upon themselves.  Or if they’re not partying on loans, how their parents justify supporting such a unsustainable lifestyle.  I guess I just moved past that mentality years ago (though I’m not sure if I ever even got to that point, I probably skipped it).

So at what point do these carefree twenty-somethings realize what the real world is like? While it’d be funny to watch them crash and burn, they probably would just tax the welfare system to its limits.  Maybe we can just feed them to the hobos downtown.

So this story in the Vancouver Sun means the next six weeks at the office are going to suck comfort-wise.  Already today the lights went off (which isn’t such a big deal given the giant windows in the office) and we have to shut down our computers at the end of the day.  The most annoying part: the air conditioning has to be ratcheted down, which means the office could regularly hit 26 degrees C instead of the usual balmy 20.  Given the giant windows letting in streams of sunlight, it’ll raise the office temperature another degree or two.  And of course, the six weeks (or more) that it’ll take to fix this blown transformer is pretty much the hottest part of the year, and thus the only time the A/C is heavily needed.

Good thing it’s going to be 37 tomorrow! *puke*

…Mike Keenan.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

*breathe*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

In other news, today a bird got sucked into an intake valve of the building where I work. All that remained was a few feathers (my complete amateur opinion is that it was a seagull) floating around. My co-worker piped up, “does anyone smell bird?” I’m pretty sure we WILL start smelling bird if they don’t take it out soon. I don’t think the staff at Harbour Centre is as slow as Facilities Management at SFU, otherwise the building’s gonna rank up over the weekend.

Trevor sent me this link, an edited version of the Charlie Brown Christmas. Frickin’ hilarious.

There’s been so much candy at work this week. Chocolates, jelly beans, candy canes…oh man, the candy canes. I was so wired today, and it didn’t help that I was hacking some Wordpress plugin. I’m glad that I actually have a regular gym routine now (hooray for gyms at work) so that I’m not gaining weight. I think I managed to lose about 10 pounds in the last month or so. Only slightly overweight now, huzzah.

I keep forgetting to look at places to live. I’m done Christmas shopping now, so I suppose I don’t really have an excuse not to. Other than the Canucks games, but that really makes me yell at the TV a lot. Eh, so goes the life of a hockey fan.

The weeks seem to move a little more quickly now that I’m working full-time.  December is upon us, and oddly enough there are still another 3 weeks or so until it actually becomes winter.  Not that Mother Nature really cared mind you, given the recent dump of snow we’ve had.  While the snow does make landscape shots pretty, it has become more of a nuisance to me over the years instead of something I look forward to.  It’s mostly because of the lack of snow removal anything used by the GVRD, which causes roads to become utter crap and buses to get behind schedule.  Most of all, the jackasses that don’t shovel their sidewalks.  I’m not talking the poor saps who live on corner lots and have half their own block to shovel.  I’m talking about the twits who live on lots that have literally 3 metres of sidewalk space to shovel.  One house I walked past had compacted snow so much like ice and built up snow so that it was impossible to walk on without falling.  SHOVEL YOUR GODDAMN SIDEWALKS YOU ASSPIRATES.

December also means Christmas shopping.  Which means malls.  I hate malls, at any time of the year.  More people just means more stupidity, which makes me want to stab things.  I need to pick up stuff for family and a Secret Santa at work which hasn’t been drawn yet.  Things would be a lot easier if my parents drank because then I could cop out with booze.  Ah well, it means I just need to find something useful because they hate useless trinkets.  Although my dad never found any kind of gadget “useless.”

Working downtown also gives me some interesting encounters with beggars.  Case in point this one guy who came up to me the other day at the bus stop saying he was $2 short for the West Coast Express and needed to get to Mission.  He was sorry to trouble me, but he just got out of the hospital with a plastic leg, you see, and he really needs to get home.  There are a few things wrong with that story.

1. A one-way ticket from Waterfront to Mission costs $10.25.  The magic of arithmetic tells me he had $8.25.  A 3 zone bus ticket costs $4.50.  Even if it expired, it’s only another $2.25 to Mission because you’d definitely be in zone 3 after an hour and a half.  Look at that, you have enough to buy yourself a coffee and a doughnut at Tim Horton’s.
2. They give out plastic legs at hospitals?
3. He wasn’t limping.

In other words, the guy wanted a beer.  I mean, at least the bums down at GM Place are honest and they sing for a beer.  They can’t help but put a smile on your face then.  But coming up with a crappy lie like “a plastic leg?” I suppose it shows a little more effort to get money than the woman who started harassing Tim Horton’s customers INSIDE the Tim Horton’s.

Today I had somewhat of a snow day myself. Around 1:30 the office manager e-mailed everyone and said there was a traffic advisory. The boss decided to send us home before the roads got so bad that the buses stopped running. My work day ended around 2pm today. The roads were pretty bad, as evidenced by the traffic crawl even in early afternoon. It’s kinda sad how a few inches of snow cause a traffic advisory because the roads suck so much. One of my co-workers mentioned as such, because he’s from Calgary. The thing is, “Vancouver” and “snow preparedness” go together like “Calgary” and “not sucking.” I didn’t say that to him, but I basically gave my condolences that he was born in Calgary. Yeah, I’m mean, but he’s an Albertan. To me, that’s almost as bad as being from Ontario.

Speaking of people in Ontario, Bishnu (who “claims” to be a Canuck fan) and I had this discussion a few days ago:

Joe Geek: dude the ontario cold snap lasts a few months
Joe Geek: -35 weather hits in january
bishnu: DON’T CRUSH MY DREAMS
Joe Geek: your fault for moving to goddamn ontario
bishnu: hey at least a hockey team in this province won a stanley cup in the last half-century
bishnu: *sigh*
Joe Geek: did you just praise the leafs?
bishnu: OH GOD HOW DID IT HAPPEN
bishnu: BACK TO THERAPY FOR BISHNU

You may commence mocking him.  Not as if you needed a reason to mock Bishnu, but this should give you some extra incentive.