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Saturday, January 12, 2002
I started violin lessons yesterday, and just got through with my daily practice today. I noticed that I was a lot more comfortable and had much better tone control today than at the lesson, probably due to not having three Taiwanese women watching me, all of them at one time or another professional violinists or pianists.
In my brief experience, I've learned that a violin can unleash a terrible sound very easily, and that the key to making a sound that is bearable is to be very relaxed and use smooth, even pressure. I'm gonna drink some Port and see if that helps any.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/12/2002
United States of America Patriot Registration, Because Non-Traitors Have Nothing to Hide.
.: posted by andy 1/12/2002
Saturday morning at work. I'm the dispatcher right now, which means I sit at Pam's computer and answer the phone, make work orders, and call the guys out on campus. No one's called in the last 30 minutes. I installed Spinner on Pam's computer, so I can listen to some music while I surf the web. The University has a weird policy about overtime. For the most part, instead of paying you time and a half, they pay you with comp time. Our boss is pretty cool, though. At the end of the summer he gave the guys a choice between taking their overtime as pay or as comp time. I'm hoping I get the chance to take this as pay. Then again, comp time might not be a bad thing to have on hand, considering that I'll be taking two classes and may need to ditch out of work every now and then.
Mrs. Thomas and I saw Lord of the Rings last weekend. She liked it, but I felt like they put too much effort into making a pretty movie. The acting was good enough, and I guess the story was ok, but so much of the movie was just scenery and special effects. They could have cut some of that out, and made it a shorter movie. I'm generally not a big fan of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. I never read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is probably my mistake, but I understand that one of the things readers appreciate about it is that Tolkien created an entire world, with well-defined cultures, languages, and races. That's obviously a huge achievement, and one that I really respect. Sci-fi/fantasy books irritate me, though, for these reasons:
1.Magic(k): Most authors use magic as a sort of book-long deus ex machina. Any situation can be solved with magic, and any character can do anything he/she dreams of with magic. In other words, the characters have god-like powers in almost every case. I like Robert Jordan's Rand Al-Thor books because he's created a very well-defined, orderly magical system in which anything is definitely not possible, and magic doesn't make a character invincible. Also, what the hell kind of wizard is Gandolf? He can blow a smoke ring in the shape of a sail-boat and he can have a knock-down drag-out magic pushing fight with another wizard, but he has to fight Orcs with a sword? Maybe the books explained this, but the movie was pretty unclear on what his powers were.
2.Invincible Protagonists: I guess this happens in almost every piece of regular fiction. But it happens especially much in sci-fi/fantasy. The author makes a big deal about how elite and unstoppable some evil creature is, and three pages later the protagonist is dusting off his/her hands after slaying the creature. Usually by using magic. I liked that Gandolf died fighting that great big demon, but based on my ignorance of the Lord of the Rings series and my knowledge of the genre, I predict that Gandolf hasn't actually died, and will resurface later on. In these stories, you have to actually see someone's head cut off to be sure they won't come up again later, and even then you can't be sure. Plunging into a seemingly bottomless chasm is just an easy way for the author to save a character for later. Like I said, though, all regular fiction seems to do this. Howard Coyle started off killing main characters fairly often, but then Dixon emerged as the ubermensch, and I stopped reading those books. Same thing with Tom Clancy's characters Jack Ryan, Domingo Chavez, and John Clark. Sum of All Fears was an unnecessarily long book, but at least the terrorists blew up the Super Bowl in that book. I read that other Tom Clancy book where the bad guys wanted to give the world a virus, and they never even had a chance because John Clark's amazing team of counterterrorist Super Friends was so elite. The only time the terrorists managed to hurt the commandos was when they staged a hostage situation so they could ambush the Super Friends. They managed to kill about four commandos. Did those commandos have names? I think one of them might have been named at some point.
I guess those are my complaints. I thought I had more, but those two grievances pretty much sum it all up.
I start classes on Monday. Textile Science and History of Design. Should be pretty interesting, he said hopefully. They'll at least be a nice break from working.
I have no idea what's wrong with blogger. They haven't posted an explanation yet.
.: posted by andy 1/12/2002
Friday, January 11, 2002
Soldering pipes ("sweating joints") is neat, especially when you discover by way of unexpected showers how bad a job you did the firs several times.
I was very interested in Jeremy's account of the Ambrose controvery, especially about his grandfather's role as top (blister?) gunner in a WW 2 B24 bomber. I had a friend up at where I teach who was Special Forces in Vietnam during the worst of the war there. He wouldn't talk about it very much, either. Nice guy, but I wouldn't want to cross him. I've read a lot about WW 2, both European and asian theaters. Ambrose does a good job (like Ernie Pyle) in getting the dogface's point of view. I'm sure his failure to attribute Childer's in his recent book was unintentional.
Went to see Lord of the Rings yesterday. I loved the book, and was impressed by the movie's fidelity to Tolkien's account. Some things left out (no Tom Bombadill) but a very good job overall. Three and a quarter hours, and no dull moments. I recommend it highly. Can't wait for the othert two parts.
Keep on those fire extinguishers, Andy. How are classes (or have you started yet)?
This is the fourth time I've tried to publish this.
.: posted by George 1/11/2002
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Today I learned to silver solder copper pipe. I also got a phone call from a woman who wanted to interview me based on one of my previous resumes. I really don't remember what the job was, but I'm pretty sure it made more money than the job I'm doing right now. Oh, well.
.: posted by andy 1/10/2002
Wednesday, January 09, 2002
I recieved a package from UPS today. "The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage" is a nice choice. That's coffee table book #3 for this christmas. Thanks Andy for helping me make this apartment a "home".
.: posted by Jeremy 1/9/2002
Blogger didn't publish my post from last night. It says it won't publish this one yet, either.
And now back to the matter at hand. I've been watching a lot of movies recently. All in all it's turning out to be a pretty cheap way to spend time. Ten bucks gets a ticket and a Coke, and with movie time, plus the 45 minute drive each way, I usually blow 4 hours. Four hours at a bar would probably run three or four times that. If I'm lucky, I can get the to twilight showings, at $3.75.
Statistically, to be a frequent movie watcher, you have to watch 12 movies a year. I've been running closer to 6 a month. I don't really like going to the movies alone, but I don't know of anyone around here to go with; and theaters aren't exactly social places, you go there to be with friends, not to make friends.
I saw Royal Tenenbaums last night. It's really good, and very hard to describe. A character driven comedy about life in a genteel family, I guess. Joe Somebody was amazingly good for a movie with Tim Allen, which means that it's watchable. Tim goes for a real role and does pretty good. Comedy-romance, Tim is a divorcee who betters himself and falls in love.
Watched the movie that Vanilla Sky is based on, Abre Los Ojos, a Spanish film starring the same leading lady, so I'm not sure I want to watch Vanilla Sky.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/9/2002
Dave Thomas is dead. That's the founder of Wendy's, not any kin of Andy. Sixty eight years old, from liver cancer.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/9/2002
Tuesday, January 08, 2002
I'll tell you what's great. Working for the state is great. My life was more stressful when I was on unemployment. The hardest part of my workday is the paperwork. I get a batch of Work Requests everyday, and at the end of the day I have to write my employee number, the date, what inventory I used, and how many hours it took. The Boss says that the hours on our work requests have to add up to 7.5 at the end of the day, so that we can keep our efficiency ratings up. The hard part is that a lot of times I can only squeeze 2 or 3 hours of real work out of my work requests. So at the end of the day I have to make up a bunch of random amounts of time, spread them out over 6 - 12 Work Requests, and make it all add up to 7.5. The really ridiculous thing is that we usually have a meeting in the morning that lasts half an hour to an hour, where we discuss things like who's seen what movies and whether everyone who drinks coffee in the morning has contributed 4 dollars to this month's coffee fund. Then a lot of times we have another meeting after lunch, where we just generally shoot the bull a little more, but not usually for more than half an hour. Then we all come back to the shop at 4 so that we have half an hour to do our paperwork. So that's an hour and a half out of our day, right there. Then there's also an hour lunch break and two fifteen minute breaks. But I still have to make my work requests add up to 7.5 hours.
A big part of my job is making sure the fire extinguishers are charged. I have to go to each fire extinguisher and take the cover off, read the little gauge to make sure the extinguisher is within the acceptable range, write the date and my initials on the tag, then replace the cover. I do this for about half of my actual work hours. To make it more interesting, I've made it into a game where I get 10 points for every extinguisher I check. I'm already past 500 for this week. I've kind of been considering raising the amount of points I get for each extinguisher, so that my score goes up faster.
.: posted by andy 1/8/2002
Stephen Ambrose is the author of Band of Brothers and many other WWII history books. I got HBO for a couple of months just so I could watch Band of Brothers, and I think it was worth it.
This story is interesting to me because the new book he "wrote" is about B24 bombers, and because the source author he incorrectly referenced is Tom Childers. Childers isn't a name that you see everywhere like Thomas or Taylor, so that's interesting. Also, my grandpa, Elvin Childers, was a flight engineer and top-turret gunner on a B24 based in northern Africa and the UK. He flew 50 missions(not the measly 25 that were required at the beginning of the war as seen in the B17 movie "Memphis Belle") and personally shot down 2 german fighters. To me, that's pretty impressive. I always want to ask him questions about the war whenever I visit him, but I can tell that he doesn't really like to talk about it. I think that's pretty understandable, since shooting down 2 airplanes is most likely taking 2 lives, unless they were very lucky and were able to get their canopies open, jump out, and open their parachutes while diving towards the ground at 500mph and maybe gushing blood from .50 calibur bullet holes at the same time. Not to mention that he may have seen some of his buddies with similar holes or missing parts. And then there's the effects of all the bombs his plane dropped.
My other grandpa, Curtis Nunley, was a SeaBee in the Pacific. He couldn't fight because he had clubbed feet, or something like that. After the SeaBees he ended up an Iron worker in houston. He helped build a lot of the skyscrapers here, and he also worked on the Astrodome.
Oh, and blogger is sucking again. I guess you get what you pay for.
.: posted by Jeremy 1/8/2002
Sunday, January 06, 2002
Looking at flooz.com, I noticed a few things I'd like to point out. Toward the very bottom, fifth paragraph up from the signature box; the one that begins "Additionally, ", says that Takiff will have his severance reduced from $195,000 to $16,250. You might think that this is very noble of him. You might also think that no one deserves $195,000 for quitting any job.
Looking closer, you might notice that his severance is reduced in this fashion in return for forgiveness of a $100,000 loan from the company, and he doesn't actually get that $16K, coz it's wrapped up into a $52,500 "Stay-On Agreement". So, this guy borrows $100K from the company and doesn't have to pay it back, plus he gets $52K, all in exchange for not looking for another job for one month, as well as appearing in bankruptcy court when subpoenaed.
This is what was wrong with dotcoms. They weren't run like real startups. They had executive agreements like those of Fortune 500 companies, plus the benefit of getting equity slices to the tune of five or ten or twenty percent. Startups are supposed to be run out of basements or garages or (thank you, Mister Dell) dorm rooms. Founders aren't supposed to make any money until they're very profitable, instead pouring it back into the company. They're supposed to live and die the company, not set up quarter million dollar exit strategies.
Instead, they get paid like kings, and if by some fluke the company actually makes it, they're billionaires. They were given more money than they had sense, with ideas like 'when we grow the company to 250 employees, we'll become profitable' and 'we've got 200 mil, and our paper value keeps swelling because of our insane stock price, so we can afford to spend 50 mil a year paying another company to take our almost non-existent revenues' or the classic 'Our current growth rate is linear or leveling, but by my calculations it will go logarithmic 2 days after our next investor meeting; or maybe the one after that.' They don't actually wake from this nightmare until they get voted out by the board of directors, or go bankrupt. Instead, it turns into 'We need 500 employees to be profitable' and 'we're out of cash, but surely our creditors will take stock, instead' or 'one more quarter'.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/6/2002
In case you ever wondered how willworkforflooz.com got its name, you can find out here. After reading that, you will fully appreciate the cleverosity of this site's title.
.: posted by andy 1/6/2002
I just felt like saying wow. I don't want to insult Devin's living condition, coz I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but one wouldn't typically think "Martha Stewart" or "Wolfgang Puc" after seeing that.
Anyway, nice.
.: posted by Jeremy 1/6/2002
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