Final Final

I took my final final of grad school this Thursday.  I hit the "Submit" button somewhere around 1:30PM, which was about 30 minutes ahead of schedule.  As soon as I was done, I considered the week over, even though I had work to do the next day and a negotiation meeting with Ryan from Arcweb.  But still, in my head, that week was done.  I kept flipping back and forth in my head between knowing what day it was and enjoying the feeling of the day that I wanted to make it, and at one point I even wrote a message to Jamie being surprised that she would be at a city council meeting on a Friday night.

It was not Friday.

Peace out.

Why Songela Should Have Hated Me

Sometime in the early-to-middle part of governor's school this year, Songela was having some trouble with some command she was trying to run to get Rails up and working properly.  She asked me if I could help, so of course I said I'd try, and at about 11:15PM or so, we sat down together to try to figure out what was wrong.

The details are a little bit fuzzy now, but I remember the first issue seemed to be that some gem wouldn't install due to a permissions error.  So I tried running it with sudo, and I believe that also didn't work.  Some directory still wouldn't allow permission!  So I ran a change owner operation on that folder as sudo to make the owner be Songela's user, and we tried it again.  Hm.... still looked like there was an error...  Somewhere around this time, I took a look at the code and noticed that, from what I could figure out, she had a typo somewhere, and that typo could have solved everything, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, feeling like I had screwed something up in her session, I suggested that she restart her computer.  So she restarted it, but when we did, we just got an error message warning us that some monitor configuration file couldn't be loaded, and the screen would display nothing other than that.  We tried restarting once or twice more before conceding that restarts would not solve this issue.  So we started Googling.

It looked like basically whatever folder I had changed the ownership of was a very important system folder and needed to be owned by the root user.  Um, oops.  Also, we had both forgotten which folder it was.  Um, oops.  And the error reports that were similar to this around the internet weren't helpful in figuring out exactly which subset of folders I had screwed up.  But the general idea seemed to be that we needed to start up a root terminal and change the permissions back to how they should be.

So we spent a while doing that.  It was getting close to midnight now, which is when she would have to go back to her side of the dorm.  The good news was that even if I couldn't fix it, she still had a Windows partition on here, so the computer was still perfectly usable.

After a little while of poking around in the root terminal, it seemed like nothing was going to fix this issue.  Songela assured me that she didn't have any important data saved on her Ubuntu partition, and therefore it'd be fine if we just got rid of it.  So I said alright, sure, we can do that and just re-install it from a flash drive that someone has sitting around or whatever.  We got onto her Windows partition, got a disk formatting tool, cleared the Ubuntu partition, and rebooted.

And that's when things went very wrong.  The boot file belonged to the Ubuntu partition.  So when we started up her computer, it just sat there at a black screen with a single blinking cursor in the top left.  No operating system would boot -- not Windows, not the USB stick that we plugged in, not the BIOS, nothing.

This was now about 12:15AM.  Songela was sitting in the girls' side of the dorm while I was sitting in the lounge area since I, as a male TA, wasn't allowed into the girls' side whenever there was reasonable belief any student might be on that side.

And I'd just like to point out that in the span of about one hour, I'd taken Songela's fully working computer from having a typo to being totally bricked.

That is why Songela should have hated me.

Anyway, I was feeling extremely anxious at this point.  Songela had trusted me to help her with her problem and I'd totally ruined her device.  Oh my god, seriously, I felt terrible.  She did live nearby, and her mom could have dropped off a Windows CD within the next couple days or something, but I wanted to fix this now.

After some more Googling, I found out how to get into the BIOS.  I switched the boot order to USB first, but still, the USB wouldn't boot.  I was just about to give up and send her to bed when I said, hey, hang on a sec, let me try one last thing, just in case.  For no good reason, I plugged the USB into another outlet, restarted... voila.  Oh my god.  It worked.

As soon as that Ubuntu screen came up, I immediately felt relieved.  Songela and I made sure that we were installing on the right hard drive partition together, but after that, I basically told her to go to sleep and that I would get Ubuntu back on her computer with Rails and other development tools ready to go by the morning.  I think she went to bed sometime between 12:30 and 12:45 in the morning.  I think I went to bed sometime around 2:15 or 2:30.

I still don't know why she ever asked me for help with anything after that >.<

Peace out.

Oh, I'll Remember You

I think I do pretty well at career fairs.  I've worked on being more light-hearted over the past few years, I guess, and that seems to play pretty well at such an event.  It kind of allows you to brag without seeming like a massive jerk.

Anyway, I think my biggest success was with one of the recruiters from SunGard.  I started talking to two of the recruiters who were at there table, but for no apparent reason ended up just talking to the one that was standing on my left side.  Of course I regaled her with the Jeff C story to the best of my ability -- math and statistics, China and Cambodia, master's in theoretical computer science, actuarial exams, maybe even mentioned that I got a perfect score (wow!) -- and I could sense that I was definitely getting a positive reaction.  She was about 30 years old maybe, probably Chinese but I didn't want to take a guess while I was there, and pretty cheerful demeanor in general.  We talked very briefly about the different styles of piano music that we were into playing, then eventually got down to talking about what kind of stuff might be appropriate for me at SunGard.

Towards the end, in the obligatory "next steps" part of the conversation, I asked for her business card.  She told me, "I think you're the first person to ask for my business card all day!"  I said something to the effect of, "Seriously?  That's like standard etiquette."  And then after she gave her card to me, I said, "So I'll email you a copy of my resume and tell you I'm the guy who.....," clearly leaving a blank space for her to fill in with something along the lines of "asked for my card first" or "talked to me about piano."

Instead, she responded pretty slyly with -- quote -- "Oh, I'll remember you."

Score.

Peace out.

Kyle's Speech

One of the last places that I ever thought might make me cry is hockey practice.

I didn't cry, but the feeling was getting close.

Kyle transferred to Drexel halfway through his freshman year.  He is clearly, and I mean very clearly, at least an order of magnitude better than any other players that we have on the roller hockey team here.  He had actually gone to school in Carolina first, and after a number of things basically realized that he didn't want to stay there and also didn't want to be so far away from his family.  One of his close friends was killed by muggers outside of a bar within his first few weeks of going to college, and he had to come back home for the funeral.

He also had suffered a series of concussions when he was in high school.  I think he said that is was his sophomore or junior year when he had a his first major concussion and was forced to sit out for a long time.  He came back to play more eventually, but kept getting hit hard enough to give him minor concussions, and kept sitting out for periods of time to make sure things were healing up there.  His doctors had told him that if he suffered another concussion, and especially a major concussion, he could suffer lifelong consequences from it, and some of them may be immediately apparent, as well.

One of those times that he came back -- I think it might have been his first game back after his major concussion -- was on the night of senior night, where his school was playing their rival, who apparently wasn't very good.  He said that there were hundreds of people in the audience, and he ended up scoring a whole mess of goals.  I can't remember exactly what he said, but at least three, and possibly up to six.  He said that it was one of the best feelings of his life; not just getting back to play the sport that he loved, but also to do really well at it at the same time, and also to be doing it in front of a crowd of people cheering him on every time he got on the ice.

Earlier this year, there was a fight at our hotel when we went near New York for a tournament.  A team member that I'll just call by his nickname, Beans, got pretty violently drunk, got in a tiff with another teammate named Jeff, and then demanded his keys and said he was leaving.  He was clearly extremely drunk, though, and nobody was going to give him his keys.  In fact, they had already been hidden.  For some reason during this, though, he zeroed in on Kyle and demanded that he tell him where the keys were.  Kyle truly didn't know.

I should also say that Beans is about 6'3" and maybe 200 pounds, and Kyle is maybe 5'9" and about 135 pounds.  It would not be a fair fight at all.  Beans can also get extremely violent and extremely angry, and he's not a weak guy, and he was very drunk to boot.  He yelled at Kyle to tell him where the keys were, and got progressively louder, and then balled up his fist and raised it back and said something to the effect of, "I'll fucking kill you if you don't tell me where the keys are."

Of course, Kyle wasn't particular afraid of getting killed immediately.  But he was afraid that a huge blow would land on his head before anybody was able to pull him off.  If that happened, those lifelong consequences would become an immediate possibility.  Somebody jumped on Beans from behind and tore him away before a blow landed.  Kyle ran out of the room and came back to the room both he and I were staying in, where I was on my computer, probably bopping about or talking to friends.

To say that Kyle was not alright would be an extreme understatement.  He was not alright for many hours, which is to say that we were all awake until about 2:00 AM.  Beans somehow escaped arrested, was kicked off the team, and I have never seen or heard of him again.

Anyway, I'm getting a little distracted.

This Sunday, we were playing Neumann College for PCRHL.  They had a power play, but Kyle, who is a great digger and very fast, wrestled the puck away from the kid and took it down to the other end.  After missing a shot, he got to the puck first and pinned it against the board to kill time.  Number 71 from Neumann came up behind him and cross-checked him into the boards with a significant amount of force.  The referee's arm went up and the whistle blew immediately, but Kyle was already on the ground and slow to get up.

He was already a complete mess by the time he got back to the bench.  It's hard maybe for other people to understand, and maybe even for me to understand, but every time something like that happens, Kyle literally sees his life flash before his eyes.  Sure, the kid was not going to actually kill him with a cross-check, but he could have killed his ability to form new memories, or to recall things from more than a few minutes ago.  That's just as bad as dying.  So Kyle was basically have the reaction that probably anybody would have after an 18-wheeler just ran over their car and missed your head by less than a centimeter.

He left during the first period.  The game got very ugly.  Even I got pissed off, and I never get pissed off.  I had a chance to nail the s*** out of #71, but for some reason I didn't do it.  It was instinct, though I'd say that in this circumstance, it was the wrong instinct.  I wish I had plowed him.  I'll get another chance, though.

Someone drove his car back.  Another kid took him to the hospital.  He was there until about 1:00 AM.  His parents came down from their house to be with him.  He was cleared of a concussion by the doctors there, although a concussion doctor who was actually at the game said that he may very well have had a concussion.

He didn't come to the game on Monday.

He came to practice on Wednesday.  The coach gathered us all together before we changed and said, "Kyle has something he'd like to say."

I don't remember verbatim.  But he said basically, well, you all saw what happened to me on Sunday, and I think that you all know my history, and you know the way that I reacted to that and probably know why.  And the truth is that I just can't let myself take a risk like that anymore.  Even though it turned out okay this time, I know that it might not always be the case, and I can't take that chance.  So I'm going to stop playing hockey.  You've all been friends to me, and I'll still be there at the games wishing you luck and opening the doors for you, but I can't play with you anymore.

He means more than that, though.  He will not play hockey again forever.

And that's what brought on the feeling.  Sometimes I have these nightmare fantasies about something happening to me that stops me from doing a thing I love, like losing a finger somehow and not being able to play piano, and even that sends shivers up my spine.  It's really difficult to imagine what my life would be like knowing that I could never play piano again.  And honestly, even if I couldn't play hockey ever again in the rest of my life, I think I would be a bit of a wreck over that because seriously I just love to do it.  And I know that however much I love it, Kyle loves it the same or more.  And it really sucked to see Kyle, who I like very much, have to force himself to stop doing something that he loves for the rest of his life.

Peace out.

Lucha

I went to Lucha last night for drinks and socializing with people from the office.  I haven't been there since basically the end of December, so I figured it would be good to see people.  I talked to DJ for a bit, and also Dave K -- mostly because he bought a generator (???).  I also met the new office manager, Jai, who wasn't going to the restaurant, and mostly just shook his hand and then stole some candy from the candy bowl.  He probably thinks I'm a bit weird.

I think I mostly talked to Jess once we actually both got there, which was after I finished yelling at DJ for not watching the Superbowl at all, even the terrible bobble catch and the interception afterward.  She said that she was feeling pretty stressed about the current project -- a pretty large insurance company that's rebuilding things from the ground up -- because she's being paid by one person to accomplish a certain thing, but the customer basically won't allow her to accomplish that.  And she said it makes her feel increasingly flight-risky.

I saw a girl there who I had met recently at a gathering.  Near the end of the party, she had said something to the effect of, "It was really nice talking to you about stuff tonight.  I'd actually like it if we hung out sometimes."  I said pretty much the same.  I guess I didn't make eye contact with her at Lucha, but it wasn't a very crowded place, and I think it would be hard not to see and/or recognize me.  Regardless, this is maybe the third or fourth time that we've crossed paths without her saying anything.  Yes, I did reach out to her one time.  Anyway, I guess that's how it goes.

At one point while I was talking to her, I was looking over her shoulder and noticed two waiters, both guys, wearing black shirts and leaning back against the wall right near the entrance to the kitchen, which was at the northwest side of the place.  A waitress walked past in a red shirt, and maybe said something to one of the guys as she walked into the kitchen.  She stopped, backed out a step to get closer to him a little bit, and he held up his left hand (she was on his right side) for a high five.  She put up her right hand to go for it, and he moved his left hand behind his head and stroked his hair back.

Both of the guys threw their heads back and laughed.  Even though I was looking at this from behind her, I can't imagine she would have any reaction other than saying ugh, and she shook her head and walked away while the two guys continued to giggle.

Peace out.

The Wrong Maria

When I was teaching at gov school in 2013, I met a student named Maria K, and she became one of the students I was closest to, so we eventually traded phone numbers and occasionally check in on each other and the like (she lives and goes to school in the opposite corner of the state).

In early 2014, I met another girl named Maria K, where the "K" here is the same as the "K" there, and became pretty good friends with her, so I got her phone number as well.  Since I already had a Maria K in my phone, I put her in as "Maria K (Jefferson)."  I generally text her more often since she lives a few blocks from me and such.

Anyway, last Friday, I was coming home from a mini-reunion with some kids from 2014 at the KOP mall, and realized as I pulled into a grocery store parking lot that I had some free time that night for hanging out.  So I went down my text conversation list, knowing it had been a while since I'd seen Maria, found Maria K, and then wrote a text, "Busy/free?"

A minute or so later, she responded, "Mostly free!  What's up?"

So I said I was grocery shopping, and what time will you be actually free?

So she said, "Just tell me when you're done and I'll be free =)" or something very close to that.  I finished shopping, drove the car back to the garage, got on my bike, pulled out my phone and texted her, "Biking to your place now!"

When I got off my bike about five minutes later at Maria's place, noticing that everything seemed to be dark, I figured I should check if she had texted me back and maybe was at the library or something like that.  When I did, I saw a text that said, "OMG This is the wrong Maria K!"

=(

Peace out.

The Things He Loved

This Saturday, I went to the Melrose for the first time in my life with Chloe and two of her friends, Wes (her boyfriend) and Harry (a friend).  I can't remember exactly how we got onto the subject other than that we were talking about funk, or things being funky, and also it turns out that Wes is a drummer for a funk band sometimes.

So he told us about this show that he played in a pretty small venue, and the entire time there was some guy dancing alone up near the stage, pretty apparently drunk, but really just having the time of his life.  He continued doing that through the entire show, and after the band stopped and cleaned up, he went out to find them.

Once he did, he just started talking to them -- keep in mind, pretty drunk.  Most of what he did was basically just hyping them up, talking about how great their show was and how much he loved it.  And then towards the end, he said, "Yeah man, you know I just loooove funk." Then he paused as if he was going to say more.  "...and women."  And he paused once more.

"...and my children."

Peace out.

The Salt on the Earth

My dad always yells at me for not wearing a helmet when I ride my bike and, additionally, not having any lights or reflectors really on my bike.  I know that it's clearly a bad decision and nothing but bad could come from it, but it's kind of annoying =\ I really have gotten lucky for my entire life having not been killed or severely screwed up because of this, though.  I should really probably put some lights on, at least.  But also, I'm planning to not use my bike very much once my motorbike is fixed.

Anyway, I really haven't had any incident on my bike pretty much ever, so I was pretty surprised at how the first one came about.  I was biking back home from my parents' parking garage after the hockey game on Sunday night, and I was through the Convention Center I think on 7th street and was heading towards 9th Street -- that is, I'd be biking past the 7/11 and then turning right to go up 9th.  Since that road goes the wrong way for me at that point, though, I got up on the curb.

I wasn't going very fast at that point.  I would guess maybe something like 10 - 12 miles per hour.  I was hardly looking at the ground because there was no one in front of me, and as I was arcing the path of my bike back to the part of the sidewalk that I wanted to be on, I just felt everything stop responding to what I wanted it to do.  I was still trying to pedal, but wasn't going faster.  I was trying to stay straight up, but was not.  I pulled on the brakes, which only made it worse, and my bike tipped right over onto its left side, completing dumping me in the process.

Once I landed, I knew why it had happened.  That portion of the sidewalk had been salted to a ridiculous degree.  I mean, so salted that I actually couldn't see the sidewalk for most of that area through which I had fallen... with the exception of where my tires had swiped the salt side to side and away.  So basically the sidewalk was just covered with little orbs of friction-reducing death.

Fortunately, I really wasn't hurt.  The chain didn't even come off my bike, which is surprising, because my bike is very much a piece of crap.  My jeans didn't rip despite the fact that they are also pieces of crap, though they did have stains of white salt on them.  I definitely made a pretty loud screeching and thudding sound in the process, and when I turned around to see what was around me, I saw a young black woman on the other corner.  She looked at me, never stopped walking, and then looked away without a second thought.

I do feel pretty fortunate that I as wearing mittens.  If I hadn't, I'm pretty sure my hands would've been torn to shreds.

Anyway, so that's the story of the first time I got hurt on a bike.  And I have absolutely no one to blame, really, but myself.

Peace out.

It's Working

I wrote a Chrome extension tonight that redirects me to my to-do list if I try to go to Reddit.  Or, at least, it redirects me 95% of the time.  It was basically four lines of code:

chrome.tabs.onUpdated.addListener(function(tabID, changeInfo, tab){
  if (tab.url && (tab.url.search("www.reddit.com") != -1)){
    if (Math.random() < 0.95){
      chrome.tabs.update(tabID,{url: "https://keep.google.com/#home"});
    }
  }
});

So far, it's working.  I can't believe it took me as long as it did to get around to writing it.

Probably because I was on Reddit all the time.

[Well, not really, but the joke isn't effective otherwise.]

Peace out.

In 10 City

I've been daydreaming quite a lot recently.  I guess that this is actually an issue (?) that I've had for a pretty good while, but it definitely feels like a different quality/intensity now than it has before.

It seems to happen the most strongly when I'm just transcribing with 3Play.  Especially if it's an easy file that I'm working on, my fingers and some subset of my brain seem to just go on autopilot and I realize that I'm hardly even thinking about the work in front of me anymore.  I'm staring right at the screen and still correcting the spelling and grammar, but in my mind, I'm seeing extremely vivid scenes from the past few years.  One of the most common ones is sitting on the deck at the back of the MV Explorer on a warm day; I remember playing guitar there or looking down to the lower deck and seeing people reading, sleeping, sunbathing, whatever, especially my friend Caitlyn.  I used to just sit there between classes for five minutes listening to Seaweed Sheets.  But sometimes the scenes are less detailed, although still feel very animated, like just the feeling of being in a classroom on the side of the ship, or walking through the main hallway, or looking out the window of my room, or playing piano in the auditorium, but they all kind of happen together in the same feeling.

My daydreams don't take me to Cambodia very often, and I'm not really sure why that is.  I guess that's just how it goes.

When I think about China, for some reason, by far the biggest hit with the nostalgia part of my brain is Nan Shi Da (Nanjing Normal University).  I always just get this feeling that I'm walking over there after school on a Wednesday, and the weather is either just barely warm or just barely chilly, and there's a student next to me that I'm talking to, though the student and the conversation are both indiscernable.  We're always walking up the path to the huge set of stairs at the southwestern part of the campus.  Sometimes it's like a mash-up of all the different little shops and restaurants that I had been to while I was there, though sometimes it's a specific feeling of the ones that I had gone to most often, and sometimes it's even the clubbing district, 1912, or a specific night there.  Sometimes I'm on the roof playing guitar and Angela comes up to see me, or I'm walking with Kara and Eric, or I'm at brunch or with Courtney and Dani, or sitting in the corner of AJ Cafe with Tracy.

I love all of those memories.  I'm glad I have something to miss so strongly.  But sometimes thinking about them makes me feel very dissatisfied with my life right now.  I wish I didn't feel like that, although sometimes I wonder if it's a sign that I need to go.

Peace out.

The Interview

I had an interview with [Redacted] Games a little bit before Christmas that I think was just about the worst interview that I've ever had.  Well, maybe the interview for the Fulbright Scholarship was worse, but in that case I was totally unprepared for what was going to happen, so it's not really even comparable.

Anyway, the guy who was interviewing me apparently used to be a pretty big developer -- and apparently wrote a chapter in one of the most famous Ruby on Rails books? -- but I guess is now more of a manager(?).  He got a business certificate from U Penn, whatever that means.  Anyway, when I sent my resume and short bio to them, apparently they wrote back a few minutes later, "This guy looks fucking legit."  So we're starting off with the assumption that I am probably pretty close to what they're looking for given that reaction.

For some background, [Redacted] Games is a company that makes exactly one game, [Name of game], and therefore should probably be called [Redacted] Game.  They were interviewing me to work on the developer operations team, which basically means that they have so many computer programmers working for them that they're now hiring a meta-layer of computer programmers to make life easier for that original line of computer programmers.  But the point is that it's a programming gig.

Anyway, the first question was like, "Do you know what [Redacted] Games does?"  Yes, you make [Name of game].  I think that's your only game.  It should be called [Redacted] Game.  "Do you play [Name of game]?"  And this is where things started to go downhill.  No, of course I don't play [Name of game] because I know how to operate in the real world, so playing is a totally non-optimal use of my time.  But of course, I just said, nah, I don't play it.  "Do you play video games at all?"  Again, the truth here is the same -- no, I don’t, because it's a tremendous waste of time.  Also, did I mention that I work full-time and go to school full-time while playing on three hockey teams?  Because I work full-time and go to school full-time while playing on three hockey teams.  If you think I'm going to choose to spend my spare time staring at a screen any more than necessary, you're crazy.  But anyway, "Not really.  Well, sometimes I'll play something super casually, but I'm not really a gamer in a meaningful sense."  (That's the wrong answer, by the way.)

From there it moved on to a bunch of bullshit.  "Tell us about a time that you were criticized and responded well."  Someone criticized my work and I read the docs.  But my real reaction was, "Are you kidding me?  Do I look like I'm 16 to you?  You should ask me real questions."  Then, "Tell us about a time that you criticized someone else and they didn't respond well."  I told him about kids cheating in Cambodia, heh.  "Tell us about a time when you criticized yourself."  This question is so stupid.  Nearly every human on Earth criticizes themselves all the time.  I criticize myself when I forget to turn the heat off, or bump my leg on the table, or forget to text Yuge back.  But you can't say that during an interview, so I mentioned having an imposter complex and getting a Master's degree to help alleviate the feeling.

Then more bullshit.  He described the projects.  "So if you had to figure out what the developers wanted to see on a dashboard like this, how would you do that?"  Well, I'd ask someone whose job it is to figure that out, because I write code for a living and that's what I'm good at, not figuring out what developers want on a dashboard.  "What do you think is interesting about this?"  Well, it wasn't very interesting to be honest, which made it hard to answer, so I really had to fish.  "Finding a way to measure the effectiveness and use of each service in a unified and maintainable way seems challenging."  Well, it might be challenging, I think, but certainly not interesting.  I don't think there was really anything elegant going on in this project.

Then yet more developer-specific bullshit.  Do you go to hackathons?  Do you contribute to the open source community?  Again, keep in mind that I have been going to school full-time and working full-time since I became a professional developer so I really don't have a lot of free time, and the little I do have, I don't really want to spend doing slave labor so that my resume looks better.  For those who don't know, hackathons are competitions where companies ask people to solve their problems in 24 hours (or 48) and then pay them a negligible fraction of what that solution saved them.  Open source typically refers to bug fixes on open source projects so that you can tell an interviewer that you have open source contributions.  I didn't mention CATNIP because I just forgot it, which was unfortunate, but I'm not sure it would have really made a difference anyway.

I really hate those questions.  The question shouldn't be, "So do you do your job outside of your job?  Like, you work 24/7, right?  Like you're a developer and nothing else?"  It should just be if you're good at your job when you do your job.  I have better things to do outside of work other than work some more.

Anyway, then they asked me if I had questions.  I asked some questions, though I could tell that it hadn't gone particularly well and was pretty frustrated about that.  I think the frustration came from knowing that they first thought I was "fucking legit" and then proceeding to ask me a bunch of meaningless questions which I haven't geared my life towards answering well (i.e., playing video games, being a non-developer at work, doing work after I'm done work) without giving me a meaningful opportunity to explain why I might be good/useful for them.

Part of me wishes that I had called them out for that at the end.  But also, by that point, I didn't really feel interested in working there anymore, and doing that definitely would have sealed the deal that I could not go there.  I'm not sure that I want to work with people who judge others by those standards, anyway.

Peace out.

How You Know That You're in China

As I've said before, I basically jump out of planes as soon as the seat belt sign is turned off at the gate after landing.  I happened to be really lucky on this particular flight because the flight attendant pitied me when I asked for a right-handed desk to do work (I already had a left-handed aisle seat) and gave me an open seat in the front row.  That didn't really solve the problem because it was the middle seat in a row of five, but it was better than where I was, so I did some work there and eventually just stayed there, including taking all of my bags.

So when we pulled up to the gate and stopped, I took my seat belt off, and as soon as I heard the ding, I launched out of my seat, grabbed my stuff from the overheads, and went careening down the aisle through first class as fast as I could and was probably like the 20th person off the plane, even though first class was huge.  Once I was in the airport, I made a pretty mad dash to baggage claim and, of course, had nothing to claim, so just kept going.  Next up was customs and immigration.  The Chinese national line looked pretty long -- sucks to suckkkk -- but the foreigner line was empty.  First one, woohoo!

So I went into the roped off area and walked all the way to the front.  At that time, though, there wasn't even a customs worker there to handle foreigners, so I ended up just waiting at the yellow line or whatever.  As soon as the workers all noticed me, they signaled one of their guys to go over and help out, and so he starting walking up to one of the booths where the workers sit for processing.  And as he was doing that, a middle aged Chinese guy waltzed right on up to the window of the booth, even though I was clearly standing at the yellow line first.  Didn't look back; didn't say sorry; didn't say that he was in a rush; just jumped straight to the front of the line as if it was the proper thing to do.

And that's when I knew that I was in China.

Peace out.

All I Wanted Was a Pat Down

When I was coming back from China, I had a layover in Dallas.  My plan was to -- as I always do -- jump off the plane, run to customs, and be the first one to the gate for the next flight.  The only thing standing in my way is, of course, the TSA.

And now the TSA has pornoscanners, which I think is the most ridiculous thing ever.  I don't want to talk politics too much here because I much prefer to keep this one personal, but the whole idea is just so ridiculous that I will never allow myself to do it.  Most obviously, it's incredibly invasive.  The government is literally looking inside your pants.  Second, who knows how secure those images are?  Less obviously, it solves a red herring problem.  The problem is not that I might bring a pen, a coin, or a razor blade onto a plane.  The problem is that the cockpit is attached to the passenger area.  You will never, never, never have a safe plane until that problem is solved.  It's a fundamental flaw in the system.

Sorry.  That was more politics that I wanted here.

Anyway, as soon as I got to the front of the line, I went to the side of the pornoscanner and asked to opt out.  The girl who was guiding people through, maybe 20-something, maybe Hispanic, seemed nice enough, somewhat quietly called, "Male assist?"  Yes, with the question mark at the end.  I sat at the doorway beside the X-ray machine and waited.  All of my bins went through.  All five of them, since you need a separate one for your shoes (kill me) and your computer (are you serious) and your jacket (come on).  Note, of course, that my wallet, passport, and phone are all in those bins on the other side of the checkpoint doorway from me.

I waited a while.  Someone came through the doorway with a bunch of bins.  I saw how they unlocked it, which was easy -- literally just pulling out a pin from the side of the door.  I filed it away in my just in case folder.  I felt a bit impatient because it was getting on five minutes probably, and I had plans.  I needed to eat, go to the bathroom, get some water, and most of all I needed to submit an assignment for my operating systems class which I had found out existed that morning when I was in Nanjing and needed to turn in after six hours on trains/subways and then another twelve hours on a plane.  Anyway, I asked if she could call again.  "Male assist?"

I waited some more.  I looked around.  No one was looking at me.  I was pretty sure I could just walk through the door and no one would even notice.  I also noticed that all of my bins were still sitting there where anyone could just grab my wallet, walk away, and I'd just be sitting there behind the gate yelling they stole my wallet! but basically unable to do anything as the terribly incompetent TSA would probably just let it happen.  That frustrated me, even just the idea.  I waited for a long time again, then asked for another call.  "Male assist?"  Seriously, it was like she didn't even want me to get a pat down.

I waited yet more.  At this point it was getting kind of ridiculous, like maybe 15 to 20 minutes of just sitting at this door and waiting.  I was very, very seriously considering just opening the door and walking through.  There's a good chance that no one would have noticed, and if anyone did notice, I probably would have gotten a pat down, WHICH IS ALL I WANTED, YOU GUYS.

Just as I was on the verge of making a move along those lines, a 20-something white dude from the TSA starts walking over.  I make eye contact with him.  But before he walks over to where I'm standing, he turns and walks into the pornoscanner and waves someone to come in.  I maintain eye contact, and say hey or something like that, and he pokes his head out.  "Hey, do you think you could help me out here?"

And, quite sarcastically right off the bat, he said, "Hey man, I'm doing this right now, sooooo~~~"

I said, "Yes, I know, but could you perhaps call someone to come help me?"  The girl who had called three times was clearly listening.  I didn't plan that, but considered it a benefit.

He started moving his hands flippantly, pointing at himself and showing his palms and such, "Sorry, dude, I have to do this thing right now, sooooo I can't help you, kay?"  And then proceeded to raise his hands in the air and squat a little bit to demonstrate to someone how to be pornoscanned.  I thought it was interesting that this job of his didn't include his mouth, which is what I wanted him to use to call for someone.  It's TSA agents, though.  How are they supposed to figure these things out?

She said, "Male assist?"

It was not very effective.

Eventually, probably 25 minutes after I had started waiting, a pretty polite older guy came over and gave me my government mandated pat down.  I noticed that the cocky young white guy that I asked to help me out had actually called for a male assist also after he realized I was still there waiting five minutes or so after he had accosted me.  I quietly said thank you to him as I walked through, but purposefully also smoldered at him because he seemed like a punk.  I had never been so relieved to have a government worker feel up my junk.  At long last, I could reclaim responsibility for my passport and submit my assignment.

It's the little things in life, you know.

Thanks, TSA.

Peace out.

New Year's Devolutions

I've started to feel pretty guilty about my terrible discipline in memorializing things for the past couple years.  I used to take pictures all the time, but now I find it more annoying to carry a camera around in my pocket for some reason.  I've also heard that doing that leads to the lens problems that always seem to destroy my cameras.  But really I'm just making excuses.  I should take more pictures.  I also should have been writing more.  I know that I'm going to regret the disorganized trail of breadcrumbs that I left for myself for the past couple years once I'm a little bit further down the road.  Ugh.

Sorry, self.

Anyway, so the goal is to write three posts in any subset of my journals that I feel like per week.  That might include public and private ones, or just ones that (if anyone is still reading this...) you don't know about, so... just a heads up?  Also a heads up to my future self.  =)

I guess you might also notice that this, the first entry of the year, is taking place nearly three weeks in.  I know =(  But I was in China!  So it's not really my fault.  Kind of.

The other resolution/regression to previous behavior is to floss more.  I'm not sure why I feel like that's such a big deal, but I've always heard that it's extremely important to dental health, and I know that I don't do it enough.  So....  yeah, I know, that's boring as hell.  But it's a worthwhile goal, right?

Right, guys?

Peace out.