objective: blog at the most inopportune times and possibly something interesting will result.

it is 4.30am and i will be awake in three hours or less to work a full day - lifting, spraying lacquer, sanding, picking splinters out of my hands and so on. helping a friend from the dojang to build lockers [very classy looking wood constructions, i might add] for the newly renovated martial arts school that i am somewhat dubiously a part of.

commence the mid-life crisis, about twenty years early:

i think that it was a blessing in disguise that pops decided to suddenly fail while pretending to create his own company, in the process burning through the family savings instead of focusing on getting me through college... another kind-of lucky break was that instead of studying c++ at school like a good little boy, i was doing the fun stuff: diving through HTML and Javascript, reading about usability and the like. i had decided on computer science after having turned my brain off almost entirely during senior year of high school, and getting back into the coding groove was a trial to say the least. but for some reason i didn't stop, and even though my freshman grades were only average, i had started something more important, and possibly problematic in the future: web design.

now, as i look at myself sitting in front of the computer, i realize that my corporate experience from the past two years is largely what i can look forward to in the future. over the past two weeks, i found an internship that will have me doing web development and writing code for applications using php and sql, among other things. at the first meeting, after saying hello to everyone in attendance, the marketing strategy was discussed, and the project leader asked each of the team members [interns] what our "dream gig" would be. when it came to be my turn, i spouted indiscriminately about "functionality-driven, user-centric design" and the importance of information architecture as an integral aspect of blah blah blah blah blah.... of course, the project leader/manager guy, being very much a classic grown-up nerd, realized that there's a brain this cocky little bastard's head and began to salivate at my apparent grasp of the english language. i mean, my apparently formiddable technical knowledge. social engineering at its most polished and refined.

afterwards i thought about what i had done, and what i actually said at the meeting. in retrospect, i had confirmed the direction that my professional life has been taking for the past three or four years. i am pigeonholing myself into a career of being a service, rented out to the clients of my parent company. i am sharpening my skills so that i will become an efficient bundle of design/programming wetware, bundled inside a user-friendly, jargonized and well behaved interface.

hello sir, how may i serve you today?

that life was unsatisfying two years ago, and i see now that my desire to become a computer scientist was not guided by insight. rather, at the age of seventeen, i entered college thinking of the knowledge that i would like to have as a seventeen-year-old, not as a longterm career choice. being able to hack anything, build anything, destroy everything, that was power. but it's not life. not anymore. back then, i thought in terms of technology, not in terms of happiness. computers were my escape, and happiness was a remote possibility.

now, i think more about who i am becoming, rather than solely what i can do. from the white-collar world, i derive a sense of each person being recognized as a skill set to be used most efficiently by the corporation. people aren't people, they are personalized employee objects. profit replaces empathy as the corporation is the predominate entity, not the human beings who toil endlessly to ensure its success.

greed is a natural reaction to the fact that people are, fundamentally, nothing more than tools in this structure. after all, efficiency is just survival of the fittest; the losers obviously weren't smart enough. don't worry, it's nothing personal. just business.

looking back on my life, i want to remember who i knew, not so much what i knew. i want to remember the smiles, the hugs, the laughter, the gratitude of having helped someone... even the inevitable frustrations. it seems that life is trapped in a state of perpetual winter otherwise.

i am going to change careers.

possible:

nutritionist

teacher [of what, i'm not sure]

um... i haven't gotten much farther than the first two.

i just have to find out how to make enough money to live in the meantime. starting over from zero...

how scary and exciting ;)



audio: groove armada . superstylin

quick jot:

do not buy a dell inspiron forty-one-fucking-hundred [4100]. why not?

my experience [ briefly (non sequiturs are my guilty pleasure) ]:

bought it in early january.

now missing three keys, modem sings binary but almost never connects, battery life=2 minutes [on a full charge], screen dims when using DC power. display refuses to function with x windows. luckily, i haven't voided the warranty like i was planning to. and i will never again buy a computer that wasn't meant to be played with and tweaked.

no wonder i've got at least five text files with entries that i haven't uploaded to blogger yet.

scratching an itchy knob on my knee. mosquito's toxic bloody kisses... 5:19am. the fan on the panasonic toughbook that i'm using to write this entry is whining, pleading for me to crack open the magnesium alloy case and relieve it's psychological issues. i'm going back to sleep.

but not without some eye candy. so smooth it needs its own sound track.

audio: thievery corp . the glass bead game

oh, and, holy shit your mom's got cancer. why the fuck didn't you tell me? i heard it from someone else, and i still haven't told you that i know. when you get the balls to speak up about it, i'll understand.

brothers don't keep secrets, remember?

audio: sasha+digweed . northern exposure . disc 2 . track06

omg... wednesday night... the party, the deck, the food, the peeps, congratulations you graduated, the mosquitos.

i've never been bitten on the ass before. literally. yeee-ouch.

blazing uphill, fast, rhythmic breathing after forty-five minutes of cardiovascular sprint. i'm almost back at the apartment, my skate session is nearly over and the grind plates on my oxygens are begging to bite down and slide on a tasty curb or rail. i say to myself, no, not yet... the summer is young and there is time. uphill, bent double over the skates, i spy the key to my adrenalin release... the curb arches up at the intersection, a perfect angle, and the cross-streets make a "T". my angle of attack is coming up the leg of the T and i am aiming to end up on its left arm.

the sun burns at midheight in the sky at about one o'clock to my present orientation. deep in the afternoon, the heat may have died down somewhat, but the humidity enforces sweat as second nature. the straps settle deeply into my shoulders, and the bag sits squarely on my back. my legs pump in a synchronous beat, one-two-one-two. the quads know this routine, muscles tensing in perfect time. as i approach the intersection, i recognize the familiar rush of knowing that i could quite easily botch the jump and end up with a serious road rash [i've relatively been lucky but hard crashes are inevitable], or worse.

gaining speed, pumping faster, gripping the jet-black asphalt four wheels at a time, abec-4 bearings smoothly translating mass and acceleration into force that propels me toward the object of my desire. i glance to the right side of the intersection: there are about ten cars, lined up in three lanes at the red light that looms above. this is my go signal and i accelerate to breakneck, abdominals locked tight.

i jump the curb and line up my approach. i can feel the drivers in their seats; they know my intention. gliding for half a second, i spot the moment of execution. three... two... one...

lifting knees to abdomen, i jump a full two feet up and away from the curb. turning in midair, my only reference is my last known forward motion. the world spins too quickly for the eyes to register as the one-eighty spin hurls me through the heat-soaked atmosphere. moments pass, skates touch down. suddenly, something isn't happening the way it should; the right skate slips.

i crash.

falling onto my right side, i skid for about a meter's-length, right hand pounding the asphalt. all those breakfalls from judo come through when it counts; i jump to my feet and look to my left at the cars at the intersection. shit! i fell. fuck that; this is my game and i've still got one round left before the light turns green. i jump the curb and head back down the bank to the spot where i would re-start my approach. jumping back off the curb, in midair i test myself with a sole grab. landing it with no problems, i turn and look back uphill.

as i build speed back up the hill, i notice that the light turns green, but the sunday drivers are still idling. they want a one-act show -- no one budges at the stop line. i've got time for one last shot, and by this time i don't know what fear is. no longer thinking in words, there is no hesitation.

harder, harder, harder, the skates own the pavement. i jump the curb, glide, reach the edge, and leap. four full seconds of air, i touch down fakie [skating backwards], switch to face forward, and race off with the flow of traffic at my back.


next weekend will definitely be interesting.

audio: photek . first sequence