The Penalty Box

If you ever hear anyone list the actual things they like about their job, chances are (assuming they like their job) money is not at the top of the list. It’s almost always something intrinsically motivating, something intangible. Perhaps your co-workers are pretty awesome, or your manager isn’t a dick. Maybe you find what you do incredibly fulfilling. I watched this TED Talk again for the third time and every time I wonder why more companies can’t understand this concept of intrinsic motivation. If your company understands this, you almost certainly work for a really awesome company.

Life, and the relationships within it, is often about perspective. Your particular perspective in a relationship with someone, be it working, friendship, familial or love, is different depending on how you interact with them. Everyone has some level of crazy in them; some have OCD, some are geniuses, some are in love and some enjoy the squishing sounds that a stabbing knife makes. How much of this crazy you see in a particular person generally depends on the amount and quality of time you spend with them. What gets in the way of this time is barriers, which can be people (like your parents) or physical (like an ocean).

Take, for instance, that neighbour of yours. You’ve probably seen him do something a little crazy; maybe he goes running in short shorts when it’s so cold out your boogers freeze. You don’t know him too well though, so you’re pretty far away from his personal Crazy Tree. Because you’re so far out, he appears lower in the branches. The barrier here would be the walls of your domicile…and the fact that you don’t want to see him in short shorts. Ever.

Another example might be “That Girl” at work. You know, the one that can’t seem to shut up about her gerbil. She’s over in Sales though, and your manager generally keeps a tight lid on things so you can do some work. If your manager is good at it, you’ll never even notice just how much crazy has been kept away from you. But you probably will notice the less subtle ones, like Gerbil Girl there. You’re pretty sure she’s high up in the Crazy Tree, but you’re not close enough to be sure; your perspective just tells you that (I mean really, who names their gerbil Pinky McSparklepants?).

Barriers skew your perspective of how much crazy you see. The closer you are to someone’s Crazy Tree, the more you notice how high up they are. They could be just dangling off of a low branch or they could be swinging in the upper branches, screeching and tossing turds at you. Think about it; how much crazier did your roommate seem when you moved in with him compared to when you just had beers every now and then? Barrier of housing dropped there, letting you closer to his Crazy Tree. That supervisor that seemed really cool during the interview for grad school? Well, now that you work in his lab, he’s a turd slinger. Barrier of unfamiliarity dropped.

Where am I going with all of this? Show some appreciation for the barriers in your life, particularly the human ones. Once they’re gone, you might find yourself in the Crazy Forest in the middle of freaking Crazy Town and wondering how all this crazy just snuck up on you. Hint: it didn’t; your perspective just changed.

…but that doesn’t make it any easier.  It’s a curious emotional roller coaster when layoffs happen in at the company you work at. At times, it’s worse for those that stay behind. Call it Survivor’s Guilt, call it resentment, call it whatever you want. A sense of humour usually appears to mitigate the negative feelings, although it seems the outgoing personnel have a better mood than the ones that keep their jobs (at least the ones that are confidently employable). I won’t compare it to death because that’s far too much of a dramatization, but despite any rational thought of being able to continue communication through other means besides “being at work,” there is a brief worry of “I’m not going to see these people again.”

Besides the people front, one also goes through thoughts like “Wow, I still have my job” and “Shit, I have all this work.” How does one avoid feelings of resentment and bitterness? I don’t know if you can; when you work closely with your co-workers and develop friendships as a result, you can’t just shove all of that under a rug and go to work the next day without SOME kind of effect on your person. Tempering such feelings has a lot to do with how your company proceeds next (ie how they communicate, take care of those laid off, manage work expectations with a reduced staff). Talking to former co-workers probably also has a collaborative healing process.

In any case, it’s better to not make any decisions in a raw emotional state. Process, think, seek advice, decide.

I am amazed that turned out as coherently as it did. If it weren’t clear enough, layoffs happened at my company, but I was not among them. If, however, you are aware of openings for the following positions, I would be appreciative of an e-mail so I can pass the necessary details onto some former co-workers:

• Web developer
• Development manager/Project manager
• Office manager/Executive assistant
• Accountant
• Semantic modeller

Now I’m gonna go toast ‘em off with some scotch. Here’s to you, guys. Been a pleasure.

This one’s an easy one and a stark contrast to the prep work needed for Chicken & 40 Cloves. Here you just need to do some chopping, bring water/stock to a boil, toss stuff in and let it cook for a few minutes before serving. This soup is reputably good for colds, as the pepper in it is good at clearing the sinuses. It’s also good to help you cool down because it makes you sweat a bit.

Ingredients:

• 1 cake of tofu (if you don’t like tofu, you can skip this and use meat, like pork tenderloin)
• 1 can of bamboo shoots
• 4 or 5 Chinese mushrooms (you can use Shiitakes)
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp vinegar (increase amount of vinegar if you use any chicken stock)
• 1 Tbsp finely chopped ginger
• 1 to 2 stalks chopped green onion
• White pepper to taste, but don’t go over 1 Tbsp
• 1.5 Tbsp cornstarch mixed into 1/4 cup of water

Bring 6 cups of water to a boil. You can sub in cups of chicken stock to your liking.

Cut mushrooms into thin slices. Cut bamboo shoots into strips if they aren’t already. Cut tofu into cubes. When the water/stock is boiling, put everything in except for the cornstarch mixture. Be sure to add things gradually and mixing between items so the liquid comes back to a boil quickly.

In terms of the amount of pepper, 1 Tbsp gives a pretty good kick so if you’re particularly sensitive to pepper, you may want to look at 1/4 to 1/2 Tbsp. You can use black pepper in this case, but white pepper makes the soup look better.
Once everything is boiling for a couple of minutes, you can beat an egg and add it in. Not everyone enjoys the texture that comes with cooking an egg like this though. After the egg, pour the cornstarch mixture in and let the soup thicken up.

This should serve 4 as a side dish. Happy eatings!

Every so often, I come across an interesting recipe either online or on television that I want to try out. A jambalaya here, an orange beef stir fry there…all attempted with varying degrees of success. I figured I should blog the ones that turn out well to give myself some kind of material to write here aside from my usual tech and hockey blurbs. Plus I hear chicks dig guys that can cook.

Here’s what you’ll need for Chicken & 40 Cloves:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup and a couple tablespoons of olive oil
• 4 chicken thighs, 4 chicken drumsticks (or some combination of 8 pieces, I just like dark meat)
• Some sprigs of thyme (you can use rosemary, I like thyme more)
• Salt, pepper
• A couple sprigs of parsley
• 40 cloves of garlic (approx. 4 heads)
• Loaf of French bread, get the smaller diameter one

Hardware:

• Frying pan or oven-safe saucepan with lid
• Casserole dish
• Chef’s knife
• Tongs
• Measuring cup
• Fry splatter guard

First, warm your oven to 375F. Then peel your four heads of garlic. If you want to save time, you can be the pre-peeled stuff, but I prefer ‘em fresh. There’s also something nice about the scent of garlic as you’re cooking. Don’t pansy out and do 20 cloves or something. If you’re worried about breath, brush your teeth. Besides, garlic is good for you. It’s got some…uh…health benefits or something. Anyways, after you peel your garlic, you should get a pile like this:

Don’t de-bone your chicken or de-skin it. It helps to hold in moisture and your chicken won’t dry out. You can remove the skin when you serve if you feel it’s too fatty or something (hippie). Liberally season both sides of your chicken with salt and pepper, like so.

Then toss with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and brown both sides over high heat in your pan. Make sure you use a splatter guard, unless you think cleaning up oil all around your stove and kitchen is a fun thing to do. You’re not looking to cook your chicken at this point, you just want a searing and a nice crust. If you are using an oven safe pan at this point, just take it off of heat and don’t bother with the casserole dish. I don’t have an oven safe pan, so I transferred the chicken to a casserole dish. Cover chicken with garlic, thyme, and parsley, then cover with your 1/2 cup of olive oil. If you’re using breasts, put a slice of lemon on top to help it stay moist; breasts tend to dry more than legs/thighs. Put aluminum foil on top and then the lid to provide a good seal (this is not necessary for an oven safe pan) like so:

Stash in your oven at 375F for 1 to 1.5 hours. This varies depending on your oven; you just want your chicken fully cooked. I did about 1:20 on my oven and everything turned out fine. This is essentially like the concept behind good barbeque: low and slow makes for the best meat. Final product should look something like this:

At this point you may be wondering, what’s the bread for? Slice your French bread into however many slices you feel like eating. Then take a barbeque sauce brush and brush on some of that oil goodness from your dish. Give the slices a quick toast. Here’s the awesome part: once the bread is toasted, take one or two of the garlic cloves and spread them on your toast like buttah. Best garlic bread you’ll ever have, guaran-damn-teed. Fork up some chicken onto your plate with said garlic bread and enjoy.

This should serve 4 to 6 depending on appetite and if you serve anything else with it. Good dish to serve before you go vampire hunting. Happy eatings!

Crazy base64 encoded PHP in a database record was causing all of it. Hooray for Wordpress and its idiotic security holes.

For the curious, I found the solution here.

It seems to only affect Google Reader. Feed readers for Thunderbird, Opera and Safari all display my RSS fine, with complete posts and no spam. The feed itself contains no spam, yet it seems Google Reader keeps getting it and does not display the entire post.

I’m not sure what’s going on, and damn near broke my Wordpress install trying solutions from the interweb. I think this’ll bump up the “Re-do my site/blog in Django” task on the queue of things I need to do. Until I figure out what’s going on, sorry for the spam, Google Reader users.

Nokia has a new device coming out which is a combination of their N8xx series tablet and their N97/86 phone, the N900. It looks pretty slick. With rumours that they’re transitioning away from Symbian into the fully open sourced Maemo OS, this could be a good competitor with any Android-based phone.

Of course, this will be a first generation device because Nokia has generally kept its phone-like devices separate from its internet tablets. Given how niche the non-phone MID market is, this seems like a logical step for Nokia to take. It did take Nokia a couple iterations of their N-series tablets to get it down right, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be the same for this new phone tablet. The smartphone market is bristling with innovation now that everyone has to do something to distract the masses from Apple’s “Look! Shiny!” approach. HTC’s got something going with their Hero/Dream line and hopefully Blackberry’s next phone will be something better than the underwhelming Storm.

I suppose the upside to my contract lasting another year is that a lot of kinks ought to be ironed out of these things. I imagine I’ll find something to gripe about though. Wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone.

I didn’t see this live on TV, but I don’t know how the camera men stayed so steady with their shots. I would’ve been on the floor laughing.

Ever get your brain really fried over a problem that you spent the better part of 5 hours solving? Then only to find out you only sorta solved it when you got home? And THEN realizing it’s not even goddamn FRIDAY yet?

I am mentally exhausted and I still have way too much work to do. I should’ve taken a vacation.