Before I start my rant of gross oversimplificaiton I would like to say that I like most of the people that I work with, some of them are interesting people. Mostly the ones that I’ve worked with at the Arlington office. It seems like those people were the brave ones who, when given the opportunity to escape the dank grey prison of the Washington office (WOC) jumped ship and swam for shore. They have more spirit than the drones they left behind at the WOC.

But that grand experiment has come to an end, the development team have all been moved back to the WOC. It’s not like we were african tribesman stolen and placed in the hold of a ship. But It just really sucks to work here. The internet filtering and computer rights problems aren’t as bad as I feared, but they still block Gmail, myspace, and Yahoo Fantasy Sports. Not to mention FTP, so I’ll probably have to upload this tonight sometime. The commute kind of eats it too, 3.80 each way on the metro and either 3.75 to park or $1 each way on the bus. But I do get time to read or sleep on the way in and I’m not putting any miles on my car. Also Ellen works a few Metro stops to the east so it might be easy to get together for lunch once a week. So there are some advantages to this setup, I’m just going to really have to budget and bring my lunch to keep my finances under control.

But the weirdest part of moving is finding out that it’s all true… What you ask? Dilbert, Office Space, The Office… those aren’t jokes. I’ve always thought of them as a twisted and exagerated reflection of real life. But nope… they’re documentaries. It’s kind of frightening to know that those people actually exist. Here’s an example.

When our team moved into the cubefarm Tom and I went about our decorating. Just making the grey walls of the cube bareable by putting up a Tiki style banner and some party decorations, nothing too fancy in my eyes. But you kept seening all the little office gophers talking in the background about “those tiki guys” and we get 10 people coming by every day and making some kind of tiki bar comment… and I haven’t even put up that sign yet. From the looks we got you might think we were sacrificing a live chicken to help us program Java.

“Jobu come, make computer not afraid”

Looking around I sort of know why, nobody else has decorated anything, they’ve all been here for years and the most they have is a little picture here and there. It’s like they feel that if they show the slightest bit of individuality the agents from the Matrix will show up and replace them with another cog in the wheel. I thought the cube next to me was abandoned because theres this sort of Milton Waddoms thing going on over there… Just cardboard boxes filled with papers stacked up… but nope, there’s a guy that works there.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m not like these people, but that’s cool. I work great as the outsider and can learn to get along with anyone. But I won’t become one of them.

Later!

I worked up a little web creativity today and created a front page for Swalrus.org. I did it in the vien of the Fake Company. Basically I ripped off the front page of the Wildlife Conservation Society, I thought it would be cool to make it seem like the swalrus was a real animal. The tiny swalrui need our protection!

Anyway I thought it was a neat idea. I don’t know how much more I’m going to do on it. I may fill out a few of the detail pages, but I’m already losing steam on the project. If I can create some kind of template that I can just drop text into then I think it will go much smoother.

Later!

So i’ve been not doing much blogging recently. I just thought I’d give some updates. My computer is still farked. I think I fried either the motherboard or the processor sometime during my late night modding session. Therefore I had to buy a new one. So lets hope that my landlord waits till thursday to cash the rent check. Shouldn’t be a problem seeing that she just deposited the check from last MONTH. I’ve been spending too much money on everything. I need to go back into cheap mode. It’s kind of hard to do that with everybody coming back into town and trying to plan all these trips with me. I think I can afford them but I really shouldn’t.

Besides the computer projects I have been working on the Kegerator improvement project, which is on the verge of turning into a total debocle. I’ve been taking pictures so I should have some good blogging to do. We’ll see how that turns out tonight?

Mark

Wednesday shall here to forth be know as “What could we have been thinking Wednesday”. Jesse and I in our infinate wisdom decided that it would be a good idea to see if we could drink a beer every 10 minutes for as long as we could. So long story short… an hour and a half later… actually the Wednesday night situation wasn’t that bad. But the Thursday morning repocussions leave something to be desired. That should now be called, “Though I might die Thursday”. I’m really short on witty banter. so I’ll leave it at that.

Later!

Dude Man, you heard man, you heard!

So I’m back… back again. Back from camping this weekend in NC. Pilot Mtn to be specific. I’ve got a really relaxed vibe that I’ve brought back with me. It’s only broken up by the programming that I’ve had to do at work today. Which is leaving me with a much more frustrated vibe. So this post is going to flow, flow baby, flow.

So Google maps was way off with it’s 7:15 hr estimate for the drive time from Vienna to the campsite. Even the Mapquest estimate of 5:45 hrs was off. It took 6hrs, and we got stuck in traffic around Gainesville VA and Ate dinner at the intersection of 66 and 81. Not the worst drive I’ve ever been a part of. We watched Family Guy episodes and then Star Wars. Ellen hadn’t seen Star Wars yet, WTF! So just after 11:30 we get to the site, have Brent come get us and transfer our stuff at the gate. ( the park closed at 6pm) Then we proceeded to set up the tent in the dark, which actually wasn’t as difficult as you would expect. There were some rude comments and actions, but I blame that on the fact that I’d been driving for 6 hours. After we were satisfied that we had shelter to cover us we broke out the “warming liquids”. The Rustic Light beer of choice was of course Miller, with a smattering of Yuengling here and there. The conversation was great, ranging from truth or dare, to favorite TV bullshit. Over all a good night. With the temperature dropping rapidly we headed for the tents. Lest our Ton-Ton freeze before we reached the first marker.

The night was brisk… and by brisk I mean cold… and by cold… I mean freezing. Unfortunately my sleeping bag was not rated for these drastic settings. Usually I’m good because of the amount of heat that my body tends to produce when I sleep. But I think I found the limit. I slept till around 6 when the call of nature forced me to get out of the tent. By that time it was too light to just pee anywhere, so I moseyed on down to the bathroom complex. It seems kind of odd that I would meet one of the 3 other campers down there, but as he explained. “This is about the only thing that would get him out of the tent on a morning like this” With my bladder empty I went back to the tent and got another 3 hours of sleep.

After everyone else had started the breakfast activities, I emerged from the tent, bleary eyed and ready for oatmeal. I had a double helping of instant Maple and Brown sugar Oats and hot chocolate mix. It was scrumptious. We waited around for some other people to get there and then we set off on the hike. Which will now be referred to as “walking straight up a long long hill”. Actually I’m being a little harsh on the hike. To spare it’s feelings we’ll just say it was “difficult in parts” It was designed in stages. level walking phases accompanied by vertical quad burning, please make it stop phases. But even the most out of shape of our group made it to the top. Where we were rewarded with great views of the mountains and neato rock formations. Oh, and sandwiches.

Some of the group walked back down the trail, while others drove down the mountain. I bet you can guess which group I was with… well you’d be wrong.. I walked, sucker. We got back to the campsite in record time. But soon we realized how tired we were. In an hour or so It felt like it was either time to sleep or eat. But since it was only about 3:15 we decided that it wasn’t early enough to do either. So we just built a fire and sat around it. Good times were had by all. After a while we made whatever food had been brought for dinner. I would say that my group had the most elaborate setup with hotdogs, corn, potatoes, and steak. MMmMM it’s what’s for dinner! After that the some unusual conversations were had. unfortunate jokes were made at other’s expense. You know… the usual. We half played drinking games, while half having conversations and telling stories. It was a good time.

The next day we packed all of our crap up and headed out. the Masochists of the group decided that they were going to tackle the strenuous trail. The Nova people said “Peace out” and split. We sped back on 81, or deer meat lane as it should be called. Stopped in Roanoke and ate Mexican food. Then back on the road. 2 Star Wars movies later, and we were home. Filthy and happy.

Later!

  So I was walking blearily around the 7-11 in the morning. I’d decided that as long as I was going to be late for work anyway then I might as well be full of food. I was going for my staple diet, the egg and cheese croissant. It’s a tasty beast, especially when heated to #2 on the microwave. I almost past the display thinking it was the Reese’s display with Helio Castroneves, the IRL driver. But something caught my eye… and thank god it did! Special Edition Kit Kats
I love candy that incorporates chocolate and crunchy bits. Crunch bars, Twix, that new Take5, and especially Kit Kats. I’d been eating the equivalent of one per day in bite sized versions since Halloween. These two were Coffee and Orange/Crème… and here is their story.
I had to restrain myself from just eating them both at once. One, because I knew that I’d be all hyper later in the day. and Two cause I wasn’t sure the combination of orange and coffee sounded all that good together. So I ate the coffee one first. I was actually still drinking my coffee at the time so it mad a good match. It tasted good. really good. Not overpowering with coffee taste, but really creamy goodness. I highly recommend it.
I was going to eat the other one later in the day, but I forgot and left it on my desk. I’m lucky the cleaning lady in my office seems to ignore whatever I leave lying around. So I waited till after lunch to eat it. Orange and Crème sounds like an after lunch Kit Kat anyway. It was everything I could have hoped for. From the bright orange color to the creamsicle like smell. Tom, being disgusted with the shear concept of Orange and Crème, did not approve. But I powered on. Having been trained to like the combination by my parents frequent trips to Steak and Shake. Orange Freeze… MMmMMMMM The heat in the office had made it a little melty, perfect. It really doesn’t taste like a Kit Kat, probably because the only relation it has to the real Kit Kat is it’s form factor and it’s crispy innards. MMmMmm, crispy innards My opinion is that if you are not offended by the marriage of Orange and Crème you will like this. But I have a feeling that not as many people will like this one as do the coffee one. Anyway, it was worth the 1.65 I spent on them.
Later!