Zero Holds His Tongue

(11:07:47 AM) Zero: google is a horse of many colors
(11:08:05 AM) Castle: the man wears white shirts in may.
(11:08:24 AM) Zero: the horse has a broad yellow streak from its anus to its belly button
(11:08:54 AM) Castle: ______ loves horses and leaves pus trails.
(11:09:22 AM) Zero: ______ has been squeezed by the ______ tentacles before
(11:09:40 AM) Castle: praise be to _____’s lover. amen
(11:09:53 AM) Zero: forever and ever, amen.
(11:10:13 AM) Castle: the man takes off his white shirt and does a lil dance.

I would attempt to offer some explanation or interpretation of this IM exchange, but I feel it is much more meaningful as I encountered it.

Yesterday on my way home I saw a couple of fuzzy, long haired hippy types out playing curbside croquet golf. The improvised, obstacle laden course made me think of the peculiar variant of croquet my sister and cousins and I played during yesteryear summers. We’d start at one end of the yard and end in the other. Given that our yard was about an acre and a half and included an orchard, hills, fencing, and a pack of yapping neighborhood dogs, these games could take more than an hour to complete and usually involved a good deal of sweating and debate, and sometimes even bloodshed.

It is a shame that we adults, with all of our dignity and responsibility, tend to give up such foolish games. A rousing game of field croquet sounds very satisfying to me right now.

True “Extreme Croquet” may, on the other hand, be going a bit too far.

I’m not an aggressive or overly assertive person. However, I have learned that a sense of certainty should always be a warning sign. What follows is a transcription of a classic tactical error.

(10:03:11 AM) Boss Man: You’ll bet your life that the statusID code is only set to 4 once it goes live at the site? The timing does not indicate that
(10:03:51 AM) Zero: I try to avoid betting my existence on anything, but if I had to, I would bet it on this. I’m watching our code spit out correct data right now.

…and a little later…

(10:16:48 AM) Zero: To be frank, I’m confident the webservice is returning the correct the data. So I’m inclined to think this is either a transmission error — the data getting lost between here and there –
(10:16:57 AM) Zero: or an issue with the way the results are being interpreted.
(10:17:23 AM) Zero: Not to sound arrogant or anything — heh — but the code checks out on this side

Fumbling and making mistakes is a natural consequence of uncertainty and development. However, making a complete ASS of oneself while behaving like an arrogant know-it-all is a different thing entirely. Oy, it burns.

Update: COMEUPPANCE!

Kevin Nielsen: But here’s my point.
Kevin Nielsen: When we were (doing X), this happened about three times a week and effected everything.
Kevin Nielsen: In (state Y), this has happened once in the last five weeks and effects a very discrete number of features across our applications.
Boss Man: So you have gone from a “F” grade to a “C-”

Damn — what an ugly, ugly, ugly week and a half it’s been: yet another round of instability and turbulence at work, a mexican soap opera with real estate agents, and my friends John and Noella picking up camp and moving to California. Plus: cats with contagious insomnia, plague, pox, and a tragic recurrence of my sweet tooth, long thought dead.

Seriously. Isn’t it about time for some karmic kickbacks?

On an entirely different note: Ms. Sheppard, you have expressed doubt that I have undertaken any Purrito experiments of my own. Please see the results of said experimentation here and rest assured that my people will *definitely* keep up with your people in Purrito research. So there.

Pardon me, I must now return to eating my half pound of stale “Good ‘n’ Plenty” candy.

We placed on offer on the house and are waiting for a response early this week, probably by Monday evening but possibly as late as Tuesday. After the flurry of excitement, the silence at this point is deafening. I find myself alternating between irritable excitement, a dazed sense of inevitability, and a weary inclination to just call the whole thing off saying, “sorry, we were just kidding.” In short, it’s a grand adventure.

Technology still hates me. I do a lot of work from home, and our VPN tunnels into both our office and our datacenter have been randomly disconnecting myself and my fellow geeks from our open terminal sessions. Needless to say, this has provoked a renaissance of creative profanity. I can only hope that this period of technological mayhem is working to build up my karmic equity.

I have very fond memories of the winter of ‘06/’07, with all of its endearing snow and coziness. I have nothing good to say about this winter. Too much darkness and too little snow. Too much overtime — I worked something like 240 hours between December 14th and January 15th, even with the holiday counted in. Most of all, too much death.

Daylight savings time always bugs me because I *hate* giving up that hour. I love the long evenings, but I am typically jealous of my time, probably ridiculously so (as opposed to my sister, who is apparently trying to donate some hours back). This morning I was whining to Cathy about the injustice of giving up another hour when my daily budget of 24 is already so overextended. Abruptly remembering Bjorn, I found myself incapable of further complaint. My budget is generous, and I am grateful.

(3:49:59 PM) Nicole: kevin, are you a proud homeowner?
(3:53:45 PM) Zero: heh
(3:53:48 PM) Zero: not quite there yet
(3:54:01 PM) Zero: but I have just been approved to spend a LOT of money becoming one
(3:54:04 PM) Zero: :-S
(3:54:05 PM) Nicole: that’s really exciting–congratulations
(3:54:07 PM) Nicole: no kidding
(3:54:09 PM) Zero: thank you
(3:54:39 PM) Zero: I’m pumped, actually — I really, really love the house!
(3:54:53 PM) Zero: But it’s odd being sandwiched between excitement and nervous anxiety
(3:56:34 PM) Nicole: true
(3:56:50 PM) Nicole: i’ve heard fear and excitement are the same chemical reaction–it’s how you perceive them

I have blogged elsewhere about the hidden costs of owning a cat.  Well, my cats were unimpressed.  They have decided to step it up a notch.

Ralph ate my last pair of headphones.  So a bought a new pair.  And then he ate that, and Tigerlily finished off my microphone.  So I brought home my work headphones a few days ago.  Today, I walk into the office and see my headphones are sitting on the table.  “Oh,” I said to myself, picking them up, “these are very exposed…”  At that moment, the gruesomely severed cord flopped into sight, still dripping with Ralph saliva.

There will be vengeance.

So, I’ve been sickly and wussy with a weak flu this weekend.  Cathy’s done most of the housework.  Just now as I walked into the kitchen, she said to me:

Kitty: Sometimes you just can’t keep it cleaned up, you know, it’s just like syphilus.

Me: …!?

Kitty:  You know.  The guy with the rock.

Me:  …?

Kitty:  Oh yeah, Sisyphus.

I love malapropisms.  I really need to dig into my archives and resurrect the transcript of Jiyan on allergy meds…

Cathy and I are doing the first weekend of the Portland Jazz Festival via the KPLU Jazz Train this weekend.  It’s kind of a birthday thing, and kind of a recoup of last year, in which I also spent my birthday weekend in Portland.  We stumbled into several nice venues but found most of the shows we were interested in were already sold out.  I remember walking down to Sixth Avenue from a disappointing sushi lunch, listening to my sister’s “happy birthday rap” via voicemail — a message that totally transformed the afternoon.

Participation in the “Jazz Train” thing requires signing off an a lovely bit of legalischtick nonsense entitled “STATEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY AND AUTHORIZATION WAIVER, RELEASE AND INDEMNIFICATION AGREEMENT.”  It’s even more fun than it sounds like up front.

…I hereby acknowledge that I understand that participation in a KPLU travel program involves many types of risks.

The risks include personal injuries and properly loss resulting from moving from location to location and other causes.  Injuries could occur depending on innumerable factors.  Injury can occur as a result of the risk level of activity, transportation, walking, equipment failure, weather, acts of other participants or third parties whether or not they were negligent, lack of or improper supervision, or disease.  The injuries could occur before, during or after the activity or when traveling to or from the activity.  Every type of injury could occur.  This may include broken bones, back or brain damage, death or dismemberment.

I always love signing documents like this — it makes me feel like I’m living dangerously, on the edge, taking my life into my own hands.  Just call me “Kevin Dangerously.”

Kudos to Chris (aka the Caffeinated Gypsy, aka the Texting Terror of DC) for recognizing today’s obscure cultural reference. Or at least, I thought it was obscure — perhaps I am so thoroughly immersed in popular culture that I would not know obscurity if it struck me at an oblique angle and lodged itself in my skull, or originality if it picked my nose. When Chris acknowledged and extended the reference, I went from feeling geeky to feeling relevant. Folks, that’s a great feeling.

In exchange, Chris offered me her favorite lolcat of the day — worth taking at peek at for sure.

(12:35:18 PM) Chris: are the help desk and outlook in any way releated?
(12:35:43 PM) Chris: b/c today, the mutual hated society for them is somethingelse
(12:36:14 PM) Zero: I would say they’re related the same way the Jets and the Sharks were related –
(12:36:19 PM) Zero: classic blood feud
(12:36:42 PM) Chris: where’s officer krumpke when you need him
(12:36:51 PM) Zero: 10 pts. to you
(12:39:02 PM) Chris: B-)
(12:39:15 PM) Zero: Chris, you are one cool cat
(12:40:46 PM) Chris: aww….thanky. for that, you get my fave lolcat link of the day: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/14/funny-pictures-purrito/

And, for anyone unfamiliar with dear officer Krupke: