A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

Cabin fever makes me crazy.
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Ya know, I’ll let that stand as it is.It would take too long to explain.
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Before I came out here (I can’t believe I’m only 1/3 of the way through this) I was working on this passive solar thingamabob. It occurred to me that solar stuff only works with goodness and light when it’s getting, erm… direct goodness of light.

So I’ve got an idea to make the thing track the sun, yet still remain an independent unit.

But despite my reputation I’ve really got jack shit for electronics chops. I was obsessing over the last weekthinkin’ today that I could use some practice, and I’ve got an AWFUL lot of “alone time.” So I hit Adafruit and ordered me some toys, some wonderful wonderful toys.

So come this weekend this hotel room is going to smell like burning resin as I perform the secret incantations required to infuse magic blue smoke into some silicon and copper.

It’s going to be goodsauce. The trick is going to be getting the fruits of my labor back home without causing a TSA flipout.

So I’m sitting at the bar.

I feel a hand smack down on my shoulder.

I hear “This cunt wants to buy me a drink.”

I turn around to a fire-eyed woman, staring at me, matter of factly.

More tomorrow.

UPDATE Ok ok, too many people are asking me simple obvious questions about this because they can’t actually imagine that I wrote that right.

To sum up: I started the evening off at a cigar lounge out here in Costa Mesa. No idea what the name was, but it was up on Newport Blvd. Sparse little room, good crowd. I smoked a churchill VSG. I was feeling decadent.

At about 9:30 I headed half way back to the hotel and wandered into Madeline’s. Now, if you go look up Madeline’s on teh innert00bz, you’ll see all kinds of nasty reviews. Consider, when you read those reviews, that this is orange county in southern california, and the people who are going to post them are, well… from here.

I sat down at the bar, sparsely populated, and enjoyed my way through a few strong jack & cokes. I’d gotten into several conversations, with the redheaded bartender and a guy who works at blizzard (of all things.)

I’d just polished off my third drink when I felt someone clap their hand on my shoulder from behind and say (to me. This is where the confusion comes in) “This cunt wants to buy me a drink.”

I turned around and was greeted by a facial expression I can’t quite describe.

Sadly my head is a little fuzzy about the progression after that. Fortunately the little thing I cooked up in the lab that I installed in my neck that monitors my blood alcohol content and sets off a little red flashing light when I shouldn’t be making decisions that involved women was in solid working order.

I did buy a round of pitron shots (her choice. A good one.) Before sinking it, she poured half of hers into mine. Now, I don’t mind an extra shot. But a shot is a shot and “a shot” is what’s in the shot glass.

So, I watched her sip hers, then I shot mine. I’m not gonna lie, the two guys to my left and the bartender made an audible “woah” noise. In that half second I was feeling pretty damn smug.

Then I burped.

I…erm… hadn’t swallowed the tequila yet. (I know I know. There’s a right way to do it and that wasn’t it. Not my first rodeo. But I hadn’t eaten anything and I’d drank a considerable amount.)

My cheeks ballooned out like a hamster that’s been storing a whole earful of corn kernels in it’s cheeks. I teared up and started sweating.

Finally I got it down, but the damage to my showing had sadly been done.

I announced my intention to leave amid some protests, but as I said earlier the alarm was already going off, so I meandered (read “wove erratically”) the walk back to the hotel, where I pretty much spent all of the next day (after breakfast) saying “ouch.”

There’s more, but I’m saving some of the fun details. Because, well…

I’m going to be spending a lot of time at Madeline’s over the next few weeks.

It’s after work and I’m walking through “Fashion Island” (fucking tres puke) on my way to an atm so I can afford to get back to the hotel where I now sit.

Two goofballs a dozen yards from me were drunk off their ass and a girl walking towards them, next to me (coincidentally) and calling out.

I’d just spent the day traipsing through a hundred thousand lines of source code by hand (98.5k) and was burnt out, not looking forward to coming back to a Motel 6 in Costa Mesa for some fuckity craptastic television. (NCIS is some insulting shit, though Gaby reminds me of my old Captain (who’s far cuter.))

So she’s calling them, yelling out to them and while redialing their cell phone. While sufficiently close that they should have heard her.  But they were horsing around, being goofballs, enjoying themselves.  They finally notice her.

“You guys are in rare form.” She giggles.

Then they notice me.

“Yo, suit and tie! Lighter.”  I keep walking towards him.

“LIGHTER.  Gimme a lighter.”  He’s still 15 feet in front of me. I make eye contact, but don’t otherwise acknowledge him.  He’s wearing a plaid short sleeve shirt and cargo shorts.  He’s got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

“Yo, gimme a light.”

I can smell the beer as I walk by the guy, barely able to stand up on his own.

Ten feet past him.

“Yeah, you BETTER keep walking.”

Pop goes the Mikey.

“OR ELSE WHAT?”  Make me come out to califuckingfornia for a month, stay in a shitty hotel and take $60 in cabs every fucking day. “OR ELSE WHAT YOU FUCKING JERSEY SHORE REJECT?”  There’s two of them.  My fists are tight by my side.  I’m on the balls of my feet.  My knees are slightly bent.  I’m in a high zenkutsu-dachi, ready to drop into a real one.  I’ve been waiting for this shit for years.

The big smelly one goes wide-eyed.

“Jimmy just come ON.” The chicklet implores him.

With neither hesitation nor fanfare, they go the other way.

I’m gonna stop here for a second.

I had a conversation about this via text a few minutes through an hour after it happened and it brought to mind something I’ve wanted to post about for a while. So I figured this would be hte perfect lead in to the topic.  But in putting this down I realized, I’M that crazy dude.

Awesome :-)

Tonight I found “Sons of Guns”

Now THAT’S a Mikey show.

A few things:

- Southern California has wonderful weather and some nice legs, but none nicer than I find in NY.  This whole region is like an Italian Grandmother’s couch.  Nice and covered with plastic.  It’s awful.

- Sitting in the hotel room with the TV on I just saw some of “Big Bang Theory.”

Are… are there any men on that show?  I mean what the fuck? I’m getting sick of this shit.

As an aside: Could someone do the world a favor and shoot that Sheldon thing in the face with some double-ought?

Blergh.

Jobs good though :)

Here, read this quote. I’ll wait.

Explain to me any single thing in that sanctimonious little rantlet that has to do specifically with art, rather than every human endeavor?

In fact, I would suggest that it is LESS true of art than every other thing, as art has no inherent utility, while that that DOES have utility can also be art.

The idea is generally right. Create something.

But for the love of God, create something useful.

I got the job I wanted. It’s an innocent sounding little sentence. But there’s far more to it than it seems. The important part isn’t that I got a job. Nobody thought for a moment that it was going to be long before I solved that particular pain in the ass except perhaps me. But then I’m the exception that proves the rule. After all, it’s the only interview I’ve been on (a couple phone screens notwithstanding.)

No, the important part about that sentence is “…job I wanted.” Why, you may ask, is that the important bit? Because, fellow fellows, there quite simply hasn’t BEEN a job I’ve wanted in about 15 years. Not since I worked at IBM have I encountered a job I explicitly looked forward to beyond the most purely mercenary enthusiasm.

Since that time, every single job I’ve had, all of them, have been concessions. I’ve enjoyed working with lots (most, frankly) of the people I’ve worked with over the last decade and a half. But mostly the jobs were at their very best, mere eye-rollers. More usually they were insanely stressful, soul-crushing wastes of time.

This isn’t that. It’s a job working for a company I respect. I’ll be doing the exact type of programming work I love the most. This is something I can really throw my weight behind.

And I start in a week. They want me to fly out to Newport Beach, Cali for a month to train with the team, before letting me loose on my desk in Manhattan, where I’ll be in the lion’s den of the business customers, several of whom I met during the interview process. We all got along quite well.

When I accepted the preliminary offer a few weeks ago I asked (well, told really, I generally don’t ask much) for a couple extra weeks of padding before my start date. Despite the fact that the last decade of my resume looks like swiss cheese, I haven’t really had “time off” that I could enjoy in far too many years.

I fantasized about that relaxed feeling of having the stresses and immediate concerns lifted, if only for a short time. What could I create, if I were unburdened for a while?

They said that would be fine, after all my manager was on vacation in China so it’d be as good a time as any. I nearly peed myself with joy. FINALLY I would have some unobligated time. Sure, I’d have to spend a few days dealing with the administrivia of starting a new job. The background checks, drug test, reams of paperwork, etc. But I had more than three weeks to open the bleeder valve on the back of my mind and just let go.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d just been able to relax and find the merest moment’s peace. (Well, now I remember but that’s not a story I want to get in to here.)

So I signed all the documents. I filled out the forms. I went to Office Max and had them print a bunch of stuff, came home, filled it all out, went back and had them re-scan it so I could send it all as a bunch of emails. Then there was another batch of forms so I bought a printer/scanner because I knew what was coming. Yep, a third batch. More than thirty documents of varying degrees of intricacy.

Then there was the waiting for all the background checks, credit check (really?) drug test. There were questions about the final financial arrangements and the way I was going to be set up to work there. Who’s paying for the trip and when.

I started thinking about leaving the house for a month (but wait,it’s only three weeks now) and what I was going to have to do. Surely the fridge needed excavation. And oh NO, wardrobe! I don’t have a reasonable set of reasonably businessy pants and shirts. Hell, for the last two years I’d been wearing black jeans to work. None of that at the new place, so I have to buy… Well shit. With the plane ticket, hotel reservation and such I’m going to be squeezing things pretty tight (great, three weeks in Newport Beach sitting with my laptop in a Motel 6 waiting for my first paycheck to come through.)

And the dishwasher went kersplat and the furnace went kablam. Car rental agencies demand a major credit card, even if you pre-pay the full cost up front which caused blood to shoot out of my eyeballs on the phone with these poor customer service people.

I went to the fridge to get something to drink and stopped mid-reach.

There’s no such thing.

There is absolutely no “peace” that can be had for the low low cost of “free time.” It’s an illusion. I can feel myself still dodging the scope of that realization. Literally thousands of weeks, tens of thousands of days just looking for the end of them “so I could finally relax” then never quite been able to get a handle on the relaxation part.

It was what my friend refers to as a Diamond Bullet moment, when a realization “hits you like a diamond bullet between the eyes.” Once I saw it, the truth was so incontrovertible that I just started laughing.

No. There are only three types of peace I’ve ever experienced.

The peace of accomplishment; that momentary cool air that breezes through my mind when I’ve finally done (preferably ‘created’) something.

The peace of a moment: when things serendipitously converge, creating a beautiful moment out of thin air, such as I was referring to in my previous post.

And the third kind, which I’ve all but forgotten.

Don’t take the third kind for granted.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happiness is smoking a Havana House New Yorker, driving home into the sunset, listening to David Gray on the radio.

UPDATE: Fixed the video. Somehow I ended up with a copy-past problem with the Mali video from a few posts earlier.

So I’m feeling pretty chuffed.

At some point yesterday or last night, my furnace stopped working. I could hear the oil pump turn on and the ignition. But it wouldn’t move any air. I thunked it over a bit and realized that it was likely going to keep running like that if I left it on and achieve a possibly dangerous amount of stored heat in the process.

So I found what looked like an off switch and flicked it off, then proceeded to noodle around, seeing what I could see.

It’s generating heat but not moving the air. There is an additional sound not unlike a computer fan with something stuck in it, but not quite loud enough to be the blower for the whole furnace.

I found another panel with a handle, opened it up and there was a big fan with a motor sitting on top of it, two aligned pullys and a belt… in pieces.

Five stops and an hour long wild goosechase around Newburgh led by crappy auto-naviation software led me to Albro, who had the belts for cheap.

Installing it was almost a disappointment. Looped it over one pully, then rotated the other one ’til it grabbed.

Turned the furnace on and TADA! Heat!

In fact, more heat than I was getting before. Makes me wonder how bad that belt had been slipping, leading me to heat the basement quite so well as I had been.

No big deal. But yes, I’m feeling pleased with myself.

Yes indeedy, this is me.

Yep. I’m on a pogo stick.

Yep. I’m smoking a fucking excellent cigar. (A Don Pepin Blue label, in fact.)

No, this wasn’t staged.

If I have more fun than you, fix it (preferably on your side. I like my fun.)

Colette said something smart, as is her general inclination.

Paraphrased it went about as follows:

“If you want a tattoo, come up with the exact design. Then, once it’s settled wait a year. If you change it at all, reset the clock. If you still want it by then, get it.”

So I’ve got an idea and I really like it. Need to do the design, a relatively simple font.

A long time ago I had really amazing money problems.  I made and spent money so fast that my wallet was actually hot from the friction.  I tried all kinds of things; “no book month”, leave the card home and take cash, leave the cash home and take the card, only buy what was written on the list, category allowances.

Hogwash. None of it helped.  I was always trying to game myself.  $50/week on entertainment almost instantly became “well, $100 this week and I’ll go in for half on the next two”, a deal which was promptly forgotten the next week.

But one thing DID help, worked with my bizarre ability to circumvent my own rules, this one simple trick. (snort)

Write it down.

That’s it.  Write it down.  With money I had a major category, a minor category (i.e. food:lunch or food:groceries, car:gas, car:repair, etc.) a plain description and an amount.  After a little while I got fancy and had an account field.  But that’s all craziness and didn’t contribute to the success.

The important part was to just have a list of every penny I spent.

It wasn’t long at all before I watched my spending drop like a stone.

The strangest thing of it is that it had nothing to do with the original reason I started keeping track.  I was just keeping track to keep track.  But that wonderful aspect of human psychology started working with me for a change.  Because I was forced to write everything down, I had to examine what it was that I was spending money on.  Frequently I’d reach for an instant gratification purchase, usually a candy bar, pack of gum or something similar; and I’d have a positively audible thought “I really don’t want to add that to the list.”

Because I didn’t want the thing to be in the final accounting, I went without it.

There was nothing for me to game or get around because it wasn’t an overt attempt to strong arm myself into spending less money.

Mid to late last year I was thinking about all that and decided to try an experiment.  So for the last… oh it looks like 3 months or so, I’ve had a nightly ritual.  Every night before bed, the last thing I do is get on the scale.  I write a line on a 3×5 card (1 card per week) with the date and my weight.  New cards start on Monday night (I have no idea why, probably “start of the work week.”) and I don’t do anything with them other than just toss them in a box on Sunday night after I’ve filled out the last line for the week.

And, as before, I’ve made no other overt adjustment.

25 pounds.  I weigh less than I’ve weighed in 20 years.

I’ve got lots more I’d like to go, probably 25-30 more.  But I’m bloody tickled at this point.