I love rain. When it was pouring yesterday in the middle of the workday I wanted nothing more than to take off my shoes and socks and coat and play in the puddles. Sitting in impromptu rivers coming down the side of a hill is especially invigorating. People kept saying "what a dreary day!", but I loved it - all I needed were shorts and a t-shirt. There is hardly anything better than being rained on. It reminds me that I'm alive and part of this gigantic universe that does it's thing whether I'm here or not, whether I like it or not. And there is something hypnotically soothing about the sounds of hard rain on the roof . . .
-Kara
1) My office is completely out of 8.5" by 11" paper - which is completely my fault. Some is being delivered later today at an unspecified time - this is not going to be good enough to I just called our printer (Digital Reprographics) and asked if I could buy some of theirs. Silly? Yes. Necessary? Yes. I screwed everything up last week and need to make a better show of completing my menial tasks in the next few days.
2) My bus driver - a quiet, bald, Eastern European - slammed on the breaks probably 6 times on the way to work today. I don't think he's ever done this before. He even honked - I think at someone who stepping in front of the bus in the middle of the street.
3) In an attempt to avoid a very smoky fellow who rides the 545 I jumped on the 266 - I overheard that it has a better chance of being on time anyway, and since it showed up before my bus it seems like a safe bet. The guy I'm talking about is a chain smoker who coughs up and spits out phlegm literally every 15 second. He rides his bike in circles while smoking and spitting until the bus shows up and from his smell you know he's been doing that for pretty much the last 10 years without interruption. Before anyone goes thinking I'm too snotty for words (and I admit I have my moments) I have a dog nose . . . I can smell old water in carpets and dirty dish rags from three rooms away. Perfume gives me a headache and cigarette smoke literally makes me want to gag - it also has a psychological link as well since my favorite person in the world died of esophageal cancer caused by smoking. Wow, this story is getting long. Anyway, the point is, I jump on the 266 and smoker guy jumps on after me! Puts his bike in the rack and pays in dimes . . . wtf? He rides the 545! So at this point (after the bus driver has told me he doesn't take the fastest route to the Pioneer Square tunnel station) I decide to get off this bus and wait for my usual. What do you think happens now? Smoker guy gets off the 266, pulls his bike off the rack, and waits for the 545. Boggling.
4) Lots of bad driving, honking, and generally crankiness
5) The most disturbing event of the morning: My bus pulls up to a stop and I see someone holding a sign that says "fag law" with a gavel in the middle of the sign. It looks like the font used by the anti-gayness crowd, but I'm not entirely sure at this point. I went to a LGBT under 18 club with my friend Jacob once and the glow in the dark stamp I got on my hand said "fag" . . . you know, one of those situations where a group takes back the language used to marginalize and degrade them. Anyhow, the bus pulls a little closer to the stop light and my question in answered - there's another guy there holding that sign that says "Fags Wed" and has the picture of the two dogs with earrings, and another sign - my personal favorite - "God Hates Fags". These two jackasses have a cop standing there with them. Can you imagine why? To keep their asses from getting beaten into a pulp, which is what they deserve for standing there smiling with hate signs, smug in their supposed knowledge that they are going to heaven for being bigoted, hateful, ugly human beings who display none of the characteristics "God" asked for from his people. The God of the Bible says hate nothing, love everyone. Jesus made friends with tax collectors and prostitutes and pagans - His was a message of acceptance, tolerance, and unconditional love. What Bible are these people reading? And why, oh why are they so full of hate? Religious fanaticism is the scariest thing I can imagine - nuclear war is a close second, but at least we have a never-ceasing arms race to keep deterance levels high on that one. With religion people think they are doing something good - they think they will have an eternal reward, so all hope of logic or self-preservation is lost. But is it really religion that drives these people or just a deep sense of despair or worthlessness that they feel the need to redirect? Are they all religious or are some of these people just homophobes? And if the latter is the case, where did they get that from and why does it create so much fear for them? I know that upbringing is probably controlling 95% of what a person like this does on a day to day basis, but I don't understand how you can get to be 50 (how old these sign-holders were) without coming up with a better argument for your position than "God Hates Fags". I can't even put into words how frustrated and angry this makes me. Really, I could go on but it just seems futile.
So begins my Monday.
He's clearly good at his job, but I wonder if his style (very team-based and disciplined) will work in the largely immature NBA? Well ... hopefully he does fine.
While I doubt we'll have a hard time hiring (I imagine this is the highest profile position available this year), finding the right person might be tough - the tiny recruiting pool makes this particular job pretty tough and demands a certain style of coach.
Marc thinks that Mark Few is the right guy to steal (which might not be wrong - he also seems rather capable), with the benefit of screwing over Gonzaga ... myself, I'm still in shock - no well formulated thoughts yet. Obviously.
--Nick
Seems like the next few months are a rare flurry of activity in Game world, at least in its Stanford incarnation. And just about everyone that I know that's interested in such things is getting to play in at least one in the next few months. Except me.
If you'd have told me last year that this many would roll around and I'd manage not to play in any of them, I'd have told you that you're crazy ... but life and work have a way of getting busy at the least convenient times.
Doesn't help that the one that I'm most directly involved in (which will take all the time that I might have dedicated to playing and then some) is not ever going to have any real impact (or will they ever really be known to, in all likelihood) on the Game community I "grew up" in.
No real insight or reason for posting this, I've just been hearing tons about these things for a few weeks now and it's driving me crazy. Grrrr.
--Nick
Edit: Fixed a typo.
-by Kara
Whee! One of fifty states has emerged from the dark ages!
Kudos to San Francisco, Portland (my home town), Benton County (home to my alma mater, Oregon State), and upstate NY for trying - and congratulations to the thousands of couples who are now married but in danger of having that status revoked. But EXTRA props to the MA Supreme Court for stepping up, and a hearty thank you to the US Supreme Court for staying the hell out of this one.
And to my gay and lesbian friends, I am thrilled that you are one step closer to being on equal footing with the heterosexual population. We're getting there!
People keep asking me "you're not afraid of the bums?" For the record, no, I am not afraid of the bums. They live in the park outside my office on South Main Street in Pioneer Square. They go under the glass covered area when it's raining and they roll their blankets up carefully when they aren't using them. They sleep, they talk to one another, they play one-tone instruments for the birds. They don't ask for change, they don't smoke, and they don't coo at me despite the fact that I am essentially walking through their living room. There is nothing scary about them, nothing rude, nothing abrasive - they are familiar and the fact that they call a park bench home is of little consequence to me.
I have been in Redmond and Seattle just about three weeks now and I have some observations:
Massages cost a lot here
A lot of people smoke (more than Portland by a seemingly large margin)
Turn signals are just as unpopular as they are everywhere else
I feel really unhip in khakis and a pink shirt
Seattle has a tunnel!
Odd happenings:
Two old guys say "hellllooo" in the way that Hispanic men tend to say hello. When I ignored and then passed them one started singing "Pretty Woman . . ."
Two old men say "hello" in the way that old men on the street do. When I ignore them one keeps talking and says "how you doin' little bit?" I had a friend in college who named her cat Little Bit but I never understood that to be a common term for small things - I guess I was out of the loop.
A woman was asking for change outside of Rite Aid today - she was quite straight forward. "Can I have some change" in a smooth but manly voice (I think she was a woman, I honestly am not positive - the hair was femaleish but she was wearing a men's coat). When I passed by and ignored her she literally growled a full sentence under her voice - she sounded like Satan, I'm not kidding. I really wanted to know what exactly she said, but it was unintelligible. When I came out of the store she was just a few feet from the automatic doors, centered so people would have to walk around her, smoking out the middle of her mouth still asking for change.
Last night an older woman was trying to get her last puffs out of a cigarette before descending into the bus tunnel - the scent was travelling down anyway, because as we all know, diesel exhaust isn't nasty enough on its own. The comedy of the situation was that she'd been approached by another woman begging for money - harassing really. But that cigarette was important, so she stood there at the edge of the steps and tried to ignore the woman who was nagging her from 3 or 4 feet away. Some people think of "street people" as a scourge, but I am more inclined to be aggravated by smokers. I was kind of glad that she was being repaid through harassment for for the offending of my nostrils and lungs.
That's all for now - I know you'll be on edge of your seat for more.
:) Kara
You know you're a dork when you look at this and think that the hardest part of it is getting chosen in the drawing in the first place.
Seems like a pretty easy set of challenges to me ...
--Nick
Alright, so how does one spell booty/ie . . . as in, "I need to get me some uh that"? And do we think it the new meaning of the term was derived from the loot booty that is fun to plunder from time to time (if you're a Viking)? These are big and important questions. Also, despite the distinct lack of slang appearing on posts and comments here, I expect that a bunch of you word snobs/gurus/geeks will uncover the etimology of this very silly and fun-to-say word. Could anything be more tickling than using the term "booty call"? I think not.
-Kara
... after all, how else will the naive computing world continue to believe that Microsoft is the only company with security updates and that Apple can do no wrong?
Platform aside, patch your damn systems.
--Nick