Don't think I've posted about this before, but I have on my twitter. My neighbors like to scream at each other at random times of night. Well...that's a false statement. The wife likes to scream at her husband at random times of night. This is one of those nights, particularly special because it was at midnight, 1 am, and 3am. At this point, I went downstairs to confer with the front desk guys about what to do. They suggested that I call the police next time, since the last time they sent someone up tonight to try and get her to shut up she started yelling at him. So I'm awake, kind of coherent, and writing this (thank god for spell check tonight). I will endeavor to update this as much as I can when they do so I have a record of when this shit happens.
For the record, these people are married...newly married. I don't exactly know when it happened, but every time I hear "Hannah" talk about it, she says "we just got married." Great. One happy fucking couple. These occurrences of screaming are starting to become more frequent, mostly because she thinks her husband is cheating on her. He is about 6'6" and kind of overweight. He's what my grade school friends would call a "butterball." If he is managing to cheat on his wife, I'd wonder about who it could possibly be with. The wife, on the other hand, is about 5'7" and has a set of lungs on her that would probably make most opera singers blush. When she is yelling, it's mostly in English, with some Chinese. When she's screaming, then it becomes 1/3 English, 1/3 Chinese, and 1/3 noises that sound like she's turning into a werewolf.
Tonight, I only managed to get part of what was going on because she went straight from 0 to screaming. Audible, repeated statements were "get the fuck out of my house," "give me that fucking phone," "what the fuck did you say to her," Chinese, and werewolf birth-noises/harpy cries. At one point, she was crying so loud you could hear it out her front door and down on the other side of the hall. That's a good 50 feet. That isn't like any crying I've heard. When the security guy came up, she started screaming at him about not being allowed to cry in her own apartment and that someone had "fucking died." If someone died, you grieve, your sad, but I don't think anyone jumps into directing hate at people they don't know. If those arguments were about someone in her family dying, I'm the queen of motherfucking England.
So I sit here at 4 am, can't sleep, can't grammar too well, but I'm keeping a record for when I will inevitably have to call the cops. This way, I can make sure I remember it all.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
The most influential person in your life
I saw a reddit post today about what single person changed your life. Most people's answers are for the better. Mine's different.
Hindsight is a bitch. One day, you may find yourself wondering how you got to a certain point in your life. You wonder where things went wrong, and if your mind is willing, it wanders back to the moments in time where your life started down some path. My mind does a wonderful thing when it gets there, and it likes to explore all the options I didn't take, even the ones I didn't know I had. And then it stretches itself across the chaos of time and images what could have been. Basically, my mind is an asshole.
A good amount of time, I think back to the summer before college when I started dating a girl. My mind thought: "Well, why not? We'll see where this goes." Like I said, he's an asshole. I had no idea that words could be so powerful until a couple years later. By then, the words had become "I should stay with her, she still loves me." They became "I owe this to her." They became "We can make this work."
I entered into a relationship with the idea that I would see where it took me. Eventually I fell in love with the girl, thinking that she was all I needed. There was a distance between us (three hours by train, but we made it work for a time). Time passes, and hindsight kicks in like the bitch it is. I realize that we aren't the same people. That's ok, people grow together. However, I realize that I've grown apart, and she has grown into something that wasn't the girl I fell in love with. But she still loved me. The words I told myself convinced me that we should try to make it work for a time. And I did try. And I failed, because it seemed like I was the only one. I would ask for things to change, and the would. For a time. A couple weeks things would revert back to the way they were.
So I did reprehensible things. I lied, I cheated, I told her the distance was the reason. I told the truth: she was too dependent on me, she was suffocating my life from hundreds of miles away, and that I want to try anymore. And I hurt someone very deeply.
Why did I act so shitty? It was a good idea at the time. That good idea was me trying to keep me happy. Fortunately, that decision was a good one. But the consequences and reasons were shitty.
Why am I telling you this? It wasn't the girl that was the person who changed my life. I was. Every single time my life has gone down the shitter, it was because of myself. Every time, I picked myself back up. There was no one else. Most of the people I know are too centered on their own lives to even stop to worry about mine. I think the most profound lessons aren't the ones other people teach you. They are the ones you teach yourself. You can have inspirations in people, and they can help a great deal. Don't diminish your own contributions to your own life. Own up to your successes as well as your failures. The whole picture is so much prettier.
Hindsight is a bitch. One day, you may find yourself wondering how you got to a certain point in your life. You wonder where things went wrong, and if your mind is willing, it wanders back to the moments in time where your life started down some path. My mind does a wonderful thing when it gets there, and it likes to explore all the options I didn't take, even the ones I didn't know I had. And then it stretches itself across the chaos of time and images what could have been. Basically, my mind is an asshole.
A good amount of time, I think back to the summer before college when I started dating a girl. My mind thought: "Well, why not? We'll see where this goes." Like I said, he's an asshole. I had no idea that words could be so powerful until a couple years later. By then, the words had become "I should stay with her, she still loves me." They became "I owe this to her." They became "We can make this work."
I entered into a relationship with the idea that I would see where it took me. Eventually I fell in love with the girl, thinking that she was all I needed. There was a distance between us (three hours by train, but we made it work for a time). Time passes, and hindsight kicks in like the bitch it is. I realize that we aren't the same people. That's ok, people grow together. However, I realize that I've grown apart, and she has grown into something that wasn't the girl I fell in love with. But she still loved me. The words I told myself convinced me that we should try to make it work for a time. And I did try. And I failed, because it seemed like I was the only one. I would ask for things to change, and the would. For a time. A couple weeks things would revert back to the way they were.
So I did reprehensible things. I lied, I cheated, I told her the distance was the reason. I told the truth: she was too dependent on me, she was suffocating my life from hundreds of miles away, and that I want to try anymore. And I hurt someone very deeply.
Why did I act so shitty? It was a good idea at the time. That good idea was me trying to keep me happy. Fortunately, that decision was a good one. But the consequences and reasons were shitty.
Why am I telling you this? It wasn't the girl that was the person who changed my life. I was. Every single time my life has gone down the shitter, it was because of myself. Every time, I picked myself back up. There was no one else. Most of the people I know are too centered on their own lives to even stop to worry about mine. I think the most profound lessons aren't the ones other people teach you. They are the ones you teach yourself. You can have inspirations in people, and they can help a great deal. Don't diminish your own contributions to your own life. Own up to your successes as well as your failures. The whole picture is so much prettier.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Dear Steve,
Hi, my name is Andrew. I never knew you. In fact, I never actually owned one of your products. In fact, I hated them. I relished the fact that I could hate them. I hated the fact that you turned something so mediocre into the most trendy thing on this planet. I hated the fact that your products created a group of elitist assholes who followed you like a cult. I laughed very hard when you told people they were holding the iPhone 4 wrong, mostly at your expense.
These aren't things I would have admitted to you...far from it. If we had met, and discussed your company's policies, I would have said I disagreed with them. I would have given you my very well thought out reasons why. I'm sure you would have corrected me on a few points. You did, after all, help pave the way for new technologies, as everyone has admitted. You brought to the mainstream something that we nerds were hoarding all to ourselves. What you tried to do was right. Some of your execution was a little poor. I like to believe that your heart was in the right place.
All this though...this isn't really my point. The point I want to make is about the iMac and OSX. The original OSX. You see, Steve, you're the reason I'm a computer programmer. And because of that, I've never been truly able to hate you.
When I was in high school my freshman year, my school had purchased a whole new computer lab full of iMacs. These were the first version that still looked like old eMacs, only in all white. Most people don't realize this, but these machines were the first to pave the way for an entire decade of design for apple products. They didn't quite have the touch screen buttons on the monitor. That was a couple years away. But they had OSX. And OSX was built like unix. It had a unix style command line. And this, in my first computer science class, was how I was introduced to programming.
I would love to say that I was introduced to it through linux, as some of my colleagues can claim. I wasn't. I originally took that class because I liked video games. I was very surprised to learn how hard programming was. It took a level of abstract though. However, the one thing that I understood very quickly was the idea of compiling on a command line. OSX did NOT make it easy. In fact, it was just as hard as linux. I had trouble with the basics of programming then. But I never had trouble with my efforts trying to make it work. That was the first time I had to admit that Apple did something better than Microsoft.
Over the years, it has been a struggle for me to do determine which operating system is the best. It took me a while to realize the correct answer: there isn't one (and it sure as hell isn't Solaris). The real answer is that there isn't a best. Each one is catered to something different. And you catered yours to something special, and you did it well.
I like to tell a story about how I got into computers. I fixed my parents computer when I wasn't supposed to, and my mom grounded me for it. It's true. And that is what first got me into computers. However, because of your company, Steve, I became interested in programming. And that shaped the rest of my life. I'm a software developer now. I work for a very successful investment bank that hired me for my programming abilities. I leverage them every day (though I will never leverage it for your stuff. I would have loved to ask you what the hell your developers were thinking when they though objective C was a good idea for the iPhone). And I owe a small bit of that to you.
I'm sure in a few days I'll go back to hating your company for it's pioneering in the terribleness of DRM, privacy violations, and the like. But I still have to recognize the part you have played in my life, even though I abhorred touching anything your company produced.
So thank you, Steve Jobs. I wouldn't be here today without you, in as much as you have helped. I would like to think you passed on satisfied with your work on this Earth. I just hope the rest of us can say that we did even a sliver as much. God speed.
These aren't things I would have admitted to you...far from it. If we had met, and discussed your company's policies, I would have said I disagreed with them. I would have given you my very well thought out reasons why. I'm sure you would have corrected me on a few points. You did, after all, help pave the way for new technologies, as everyone has admitted. You brought to the mainstream something that we nerds were hoarding all to ourselves. What you tried to do was right. Some of your execution was a little poor. I like to believe that your heart was in the right place.
All this though...this isn't really my point. The point I want to make is about the iMac and OSX. The original OSX. You see, Steve, you're the reason I'm a computer programmer. And because of that, I've never been truly able to hate you.
When I was in high school my freshman year, my school had purchased a whole new computer lab full of iMacs. These were the first version that still looked like old eMacs, only in all white. Most people don't realize this, but these machines were the first to pave the way for an entire decade of design for apple products. They didn't quite have the touch screen buttons on the monitor. That was a couple years away. But they had OSX. And OSX was built like unix. It had a unix style command line. And this, in my first computer science class, was how I was introduced to programming.
I would love to say that I was introduced to it through linux, as some of my colleagues can claim. I wasn't. I originally took that class because I liked video games. I was very surprised to learn how hard programming was. It took a level of abstract though. However, the one thing that I understood very quickly was the idea of compiling on a command line. OSX did NOT make it easy. In fact, it was just as hard as linux. I had trouble with the basics of programming then. But I never had trouble with my efforts trying to make it work. That was the first time I had to admit that Apple did something better than Microsoft.
Over the years, it has been a struggle for me to do determine which operating system is the best. It took me a while to realize the correct answer: there isn't one (and it sure as hell isn't Solaris). The real answer is that there isn't a best. Each one is catered to something different. And you catered yours to something special, and you did it well.
I like to tell a story about how I got into computers. I fixed my parents computer when I wasn't supposed to, and my mom grounded me for it. It's true. And that is what first got me into computers. However, because of your company, Steve, I became interested in programming. And that shaped the rest of my life. I'm a software developer now. I work for a very successful investment bank that hired me for my programming abilities. I leverage them every day (though I will never leverage it for your stuff. I would have loved to ask you what the hell your developers were thinking when they though objective C was a good idea for the iPhone). And I owe a small bit of that to you.
I'm sure in a few days I'll go back to hating your company for it's pioneering in the terribleness of DRM, privacy violations, and the like. But I still have to recognize the part you have played in my life, even though I abhorred touching anything your company produced.
So thank you, Steve Jobs. I wouldn't be here today without you, in as much as you have helped. I would like to think you passed on satisfied with your work on this Earth. I just hope the rest of us can say that we did even a sliver as much. God speed.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Well then
Apparently, my company blocks gmail, but not my google sign in to my blog. That's odd. I promise a post tonight.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
FML
I've been trying to save up money for a while to buy an engagement ring. My girlfriend and I already have talked about it, we both want it, are looking for ward to it, and can't wait for it to happen. I say trying because each time I get close, something catastrophic happens where I need to spend all the money I save. Last time it went to two months rent. This time, it's going into my car.
My car is old, but has been trustworthy (until this summer). It's a 5 year old Mazda 3 hatchback. It has a manual transmission, and has been my trusty sidekick for many an adventure for the last two years. Before that, it had the arduous job of ferrying my father between Vegas and Tucson. I love this car, and watching her die has been a great pain of mine for the last few months. A couple months ago, I hit a catastrophic pothole. This had the job of shattering my front wheel (which instantly flats a tire) and severing my brake fluid line. I was going 60 downhill. If I had something other than a manual car, my girlfriend and I probably would have died. That was $3000 worth of repairs, because the dealer found my front struts and most of my rear suspension resembling dust.
It is time for a new car. I love the ol' gal, but her time has passed. I was thinking of replacing the car in October. Girlfriend tells me Friday (before the long drive...how lovely) that the clutch is doing something...odd. What it is doing is slipping out of gear. Great. This means the clutch is dying, but my father and I thought I had some time. I get up to Girlfriend's family lakehouse. We relax. Car goes nowhere, but I start thinking about bad things that can happen. We borrow her grandparent's spare care and plan on driving them both back down to New Jersey so GF can have a car while we look for a new one to buy this week. This is a good plan.
We started our trek south today amidst the rain. I didn't think anything of it, but I stayed the speed limit in the right lane, which is actually a challenge. I never realized how easy it is to pass everyone going 10 over. Those guys chilling out trying to obey the law actually have their work cut out for them. Traffic merging on, semi's, people going 50....it requires a lot of attention. But I did my best. It looked pretty up, and I was feeling ok about getting home.
The clutch died in Albany. That is three hours (minimum) from New Jersey. Fuck.
I ended up dropping the car off at a dealer thanks to a very friendly tow truck driver and AAA. It was after hours, so I will have to call them tomorrow to figure out what's going to happen. I have the most insanely busy week ahead of me already, and now I have to pile this crap on there. Dad and I think the clutch will cost about a grand. Not too terrible, but I would rather buy a new car. She has served her purpose, but I think her time with me is passed. After all, she seems intent on trying to kill me (or save me). The clutch died right as I was about to enter a busy intersection off an interstate.
Let's go back to the first part of this. I received a pretty big signing bonus with the new job. Almost half was taken away due to taxes. I think "that's ok, I can still buy furniture and then the ring. Then I can save up for a new car." I bought furniture last weekend. Now I'm going to have to buy a car and the ring has to be put off again. I cannot begin to describe how sad and frustrating and enraging this is. I feel like I've been treating the car and the girlfriend equally shitty right now. It just seems that I can't have what I want, and it's frustrating as hell.
I've always told the girlfriend when things got stressed that everything would be ok. Usually, I'm right, and I believe what I say. I stopped believing that today. So, for once, I get the right to say "Fuck My Life."
My car is old, but has been trustworthy (until this summer). It's a 5 year old Mazda 3 hatchback. It has a manual transmission, and has been my trusty sidekick for many an adventure for the last two years. Before that, it had the arduous job of ferrying my father between Vegas and Tucson. I love this car, and watching her die has been a great pain of mine for the last few months. A couple months ago, I hit a catastrophic pothole. This had the job of shattering my front wheel (which instantly flats a tire) and severing my brake fluid line. I was going 60 downhill. If I had something other than a manual car, my girlfriend and I probably would have died. That was $3000 worth of repairs, because the dealer found my front struts and most of my rear suspension resembling dust.
It is time for a new car. I love the ol' gal, but her time has passed. I was thinking of replacing the car in October. Girlfriend tells me Friday (before the long drive...how lovely) that the clutch is doing something...odd. What it is doing is slipping out of gear. Great. This means the clutch is dying, but my father and I thought I had some time. I get up to Girlfriend's family lakehouse. We relax. Car goes nowhere, but I start thinking about bad things that can happen. We borrow her grandparent's spare care and plan on driving them both back down to New Jersey so GF can have a car while we look for a new one to buy this week. This is a good plan.
We started our trek south today amidst the rain. I didn't think anything of it, but I stayed the speed limit in the right lane, which is actually a challenge. I never realized how easy it is to pass everyone going 10 over. Those guys chilling out trying to obey the law actually have their work cut out for them. Traffic merging on, semi's, people going 50....it requires a lot of attention. But I did my best. It looked pretty up, and I was feeling ok about getting home.
The clutch died in Albany. That is three hours (minimum) from New Jersey. Fuck.
I ended up dropping the car off at a dealer thanks to a very friendly tow truck driver and AAA. It was after hours, so I will have to call them tomorrow to figure out what's going to happen. I have the most insanely busy week ahead of me already, and now I have to pile this crap on there. Dad and I think the clutch will cost about a grand. Not too terrible, but I would rather buy a new car. She has served her purpose, but I think her time with me is passed. After all, she seems intent on trying to kill me (or save me). The clutch died right as I was about to enter a busy intersection off an interstate.
Let's go back to the first part of this. I received a pretty big signing bonus with the new job. Almost half was taken away due to taxes. I think "that's ok, I can still buy furniture and then the ring. Then I can save up for a new car." I bought furniture last weekend. Now I'm going to have to buy a car and the ring has to be put off again. I cannot begin to describe how sad and frustrating and enraging this is. I feel like I've been treating the car and the girlfriend equally shitty right now. It just seems that I can't have what I want, and it's frustrating as hell.
I've always told the girlfriend when things got stressed that everything would be ok. Usually, I'm right, and I believe what I say. I stopped believing that today. So, for once, I get the right to say "Fuck My Life."
Monday, August 15, 2011
Long Break
I do stupid things, and I will often be the first to admit it. Especially after a night of drinking. However, it is pretty rare that I enter into an activity with full knowledge of the vastness of my stupidity. This summer, I performed just such an activity: I started teaching. Why? I needed to pay rent, and my full time job hadn't started yet. This decision resulted in a few distinct outcomes:
- No free time whatsoever (so no updates)
- The money with which to pay rent
- Pure frustration
I thought I had been frustrated before. This was before I asked a simple question to a class and received nothing but the blank stares of empty faces and emptier minds. This was before I had to explain the difference between equality comparison and assignment in programming. This was before I became known, for a brief period, as "Professor Bujerkee."
The STEP program is a very progressive program where my alma mater takes students from inner-city areas all around New Jersey and brings them to campus for 6 weeks. During this time, they take "college level classes." If they pass, they get to enroll as a student and admission is guaranteed. However, if they fail, they're out. This basically gives them one chance to pull themselves up by their boot-straps and get the fuck out of the terrible areas they come from. These kids are not used to college, mentally challenging and frustrating work, or being in an environment populated by a bunch of weird white nerds. They have more issues than missing coursework.
My job: teach these kids computer science. Basic, not even three weeks into the actual class computer science. This was a challenge for them. However, this is not to say that they are stupid. This is just a concept that was completely alien to them. Thinking in the logic that is required from most computer science courses is foreign to most people. It is not math. It was I affectionately call "Incredible Bullshit Math" (aka IBM). The easiest comparison I can think of is this: In Calculus, you can perform many operations at once. In basic programming, you can do only one at a time. These small individual operations are what make programming. Lots of them.
Trying to get students to wrap their heads around this was hard. Me figuring out how to teach ( I didn't really get it down until the fourth week) was much like watching a dog trying to get out of a large blanket. I floundered around for a bit, made progress, lost a whole shitton of progress, the somehow miraculously managed to get out without any reason or knowledge of how I did it. However, it was exhausting.
Things I have learned from 6 weeks as a teacher:
- Teaching is hard
- Students are dicks
- Some students are a lot of fun
- Students are still dicks
- The concept of a loop is like quantum physics
- Showing the class two ways to do the same thing will confuse them all
- Dry erase markers are stupidly expensive
- Intelligence does not necessarily mean good grades
- Girls have cooties. No one wanted to sit by them. I have no idea why this happened.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Every So Often aka the World is Shit
People ask me why I have such a jaded view of the world. I pay attention. This world isn't pretty. To put it succinctly, this world is more fucked up than a Salvador Dali painting viewed while tripping on acid. Most people, and I'm not limiting this to Americans, it's most of the non-third world, are happy to live in their nice, quiet bubbles and live ignorant of what goes on every day around the world. Pakistan is always one of my favorite countries to harp on. America's ally that is just fucked in every way imaginable.
Video was released yesterday of a man being shot twice by Pakistani Rangers, then left to bleed out on the ground. He begged for his life, begged for help, and they just stood and watched him die. He had done nothing, but was accused of trying to rob someone. Clearly enough to be executed, right?
The BBC article reviewing the whole situation is here.
The video I will link below, but I must warn anyone who views this: it is NOT for the faint of heart. Watching a man die is a very disturbing thing. I hope youtube leaves it up.
Video here.
When I got to college, I decided that I would start educating myself about the world outside my country. I did. I opened my eyes to a world of information and news that is mostly buried behind celebrity hype, gas prices, and other kinds of drivel. However, once you take your head out of the hole, it's hard to get it back in. I stuck my head back in the hole about a year ago when I started taking this stuff way too seriously. Every so often, a day comes like today when I find something like this. I try as hard as I can to get my head back in the hole. This is too hard for me though. I think that man's cries of pain will haunt me for a long time.
I wish I knew what to do to help. Maybe I'll keep my head above the ground long enough to find out or create a new way to help.
Video was released yesterday of a man being shot twice by Pakistani Rangers, then left to bleed out on the ground. He begged for his life, begged for help, and they just stood and watched him die. He had done nothing, but was accused of trying to rob someone. Clearly enough to be executed, right?
The BBC article reviewing the whole situation is here.
The video I will link below, but I must warn anyone who views this: it is NOT for the faint of heart. Watching a man die is a very disturbing thing. I hope youtube leaves it up.
Video here.
When I got to college, I decided that I would start educating myself about the world outside my country. I did. I opened my eyes to a world of information and news that is mostly buried behind celebrity hype, gas prices, and other kinds of drivel. However, once you take your head out of the hole, it's hard to get it back in. I stuck my head back in the hole about a year ago when I started taking this stuff way too seriously. Every so often, a day comes like today when I find something like this. I try as hard as I can to get my head back in the hole. This is too hard for me though. I think that man's cries of pain will haunt me for a long time.
I wish I knew what to do to help. Maybe I'll keep my head above the ground long enough to find out or create a new way to help.
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