Visitors from Another State
My family came into town this week! We did all kinds of stuff, and there was a metric ton of cable car riding, but we also managed to hit up the street car, the bus, the old school street car, and BART. I’m still glad to be in SF, and I don’t feel home sick really, but I was happy to have a bit of home here. The other nice thing was showing them around all the places I go so they can picture it when I talk about it on the phone.
Of the places we went, SFMOMA (the modern art museum) was the most fun for me. This was largely due to the fact that I wasn’t afraid to interact with the art that was there for you to interact with. Paper on the ground? I’m reading it! Brooms to pick up? I’m pickin’! it kind of made the Academy of Science pale in comparison with it’s lack of stuff to put your hands on.
While they were here, they got to meet Amy. They also hung out with the Dickerson’s on Saturday. I was most happy to see them interacting with my friends, new and old, in SF. As all trips though, they had to end and I’m pretty tired. So while they fly over two time zones into a third, I’m going to clean up the war zone and take a nap.
Relearn Old Lessons
Josh asked me about sunrises and I ended up finding some old posts about an exgirlfriend of mine, Jess, and I took a stroll down “Will is a dummy” lane. The lesson I had learned, the lesson I had forgotten, was that people care about me. And it’s easy to say “Well ‘duh’ Will.” But that’s the trap I’m in again. It’s easy to see people care, but what does that care mean to them? To Jess, she cared enough to put her life on hold so that I could be a part of it. I cared enough to push her away when I thought that her happiness was to be found elsewhere.
My mistake was failing to understand that her happiness was rooted as much in me as mine was in her. I didn’t think that Will Read could outweigh starting a career and moving away from Lafayette. I don’t know if she understood that she could outweigh awful feeling of being alone. How I was dumb enough to let myself “win” is mind boggling. How I was blind enough to think I didn’t count for anything to her is just as crazy.
So with the next girl, I’m going to pay attention, not just to her words, but her actions too. I’m going to listen, and I’m going to let myself feel special to her. I am not going to assume that I am no better than the next guy. I am going to be thankful, and humble, and I will understand that we have a relationship because to her, I’m just as special as she is to me.
Call for Stories
Hey I’m writing an autobio-something (the goal is a book, but if it turns into something shorter that’s ok). It’s gonna focus on me skipping developmental stages of life and how that’s shaped me into the Will Read of 27 that you know today. From my parents calling me “a little adult”, to going from rolling to walking without crawling, to later stuff, like never really getting into trouble, to being more of a kid when everyone else was racing to be an adult, etc. And so if you have stories or reflections that you think I should work in, or even if you think it’s way off topic but want to rehash the past for a bit, type ‘em up real quick and get ‘em to me (will.read@gmail.com)
My goal is to work on this during the down time between jobs. Maybe a rough draft by New Year’s.
After 10 Years
I’m typing this on my first, and essentially only keyboard that I’ve ever owned. I bought it when I assembled my first PC back when Cyrix was making a run against Intel. It’s an ergonomic keyboard, and it has a built in touchpad. For both of those reasons I bought it, and for both of those reasons people who use my keyboard hate it.
But lately it had been having trouble with the space bar. Kind of an issuewhenyoursentenceslook like this. So I opened it up, and I should have taken a picture, but let me say I never want to dig up dead people. Seeing 10 year old hair and skin/ dust/ food crumbs was super gross. So I brushed that out, gave the main keys a bath in the sink, and pulled off the back. I found that my keyboard was pretty advanced, not a cheap printed circuit board like I’m accustomed to finding, no, inside was three layers of plastic (Mylar) and a different layer of the circuit was printed on each sheet. The magic happens when you press a key, the middle layer acts as an insulator, and doesn’t conduct very well, but when the three layers are pinched under the pressure of a key, the top layer makes a connection with the bottom, and viola! key press action.
While I was in there, I made sure to realign the layers under the space bar. Screwed it all together, put the keys back on, and magically my space bar works again! So tonight I raise my glass to the best keyboard a guy could ask for, here’s to 10 more years, cheers!
Jobless
I’ve resigned from Jobvite. You can ask me about the details offline, but let me say I still like the product, and there are a lot of good people in charge who will do good things with the company.
My last day is Tuesday, November 25th. After that it’s the good life, except that I won’t have income, so it won’t be that good. Actually not that good at all. So needless to say I’m looking for a job.Not having a job, but still having the expenses of living in SF is probably the scariest thing in my life thus far. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty afraid.
I may try a contract job to fill the next 3-6 months and then go from there. I’ve also been working my social network to establish contacts at companies I want to work for like Pivotal and SalesForce, both of which are close to where I work now and filled with people who really seem to understand the importance of job satisfaction.
But I might switch out of development. Today I just got back from being certified as a Scrum Master. Scrum, in addition to being a rugby thing, is a set of business practices that are gaining popularity in the software world and actually has a lot of roots in the automotive industry. But a Scrum Master is essentially a Project Manager, so I’m trying to learn how that profession works.
If anyone knows someone who needs a project manager in the bay area for a software shop, let me know.
Gah!!!
So ever since I moved into my apartment here in SF I haven’t been able to geton the wireless network with my desktop PC. I always assumed it was my old ass computer that had seen betterdays – maybe the USB ports were fried, or maybe I pried open my WiFi dongle onetoo many times thiking about making something elsethat was WiFi enabled.
Well yesterday I bought a new USB PCI card, popped it in, attached my WiFi dongle and got connected for like 20 seconds, noticed there was not outbound traffic, then got kicked off. This happened a couple of times. I figured Imusthave a flakey WiFi dongle, but the storewas long closed, soI had to go this morning.
I returned the USB card, and got a WiFi PCI card instead. Got it home, plugged it in, still couldn’t connect. So finally I reset the wireless router. It didn’t actually reset it, so I plugged in a cable and logged into the router. After putting a password other than the default one on the router, I noticedthat my passphrase (the old room mates phone number) was sitting there in clear text. “!?!?!”, I screamed! Apparently instead of having the phone number as a passphrease and then hashing it, he just used lame 64-bit encryption (instead of 128-bit) and just used the phone number as a hash.
So my hardware has been working fine all this time. Just that someone used the technology differently than it was intended to be used. Gah!!!!
In the land of dating…
…”friends” after “casually dating” is not better. And I don’t mean for that to sound as hard as it might, but those words are the best I have to express how I feel.
Audience
Just saw Rockin Rolla. The humor was mostly based on homophobic tendencies which wasn’t all that funny to me. But then I’m not what I’d consider your standard American homophobic action junkie. So in that regard, the writers did a fantastic job of understanding their audience. It makes me wonder if there’s some sort of connection with enjoying fantasy violence and a lack of comfort with guys who like guys.
