900 Number Operator

I gave a talk last month at church, but was sick and had a really husky voice. I jokingly told everyone that I figured if I sounded like a 1940's movie star they were more likely to pay attention to what I had to say.

The talk went well, and afterwards I was talking to one of the guys in the ward (whom I hardly know, but that's his fault. Brief aside: when he first moved into the ward Sweetheart had a thing for him, so we invited him to hang out with us a number of times. He continually declined, finally telling her he had a girlfriend (that turned out to not be true) and so we stopped asking him to do anything with us.). He laughingly told me that I sounded like a 900 number operator. WHAT?! I laughed, I had no idea we knew each other well enough for him to tell me something like that. Apparently, we do.

A couple of weeks ago at Stake Conference someone invited a bunch of us over to her place, including him. He accepted. Well, he lives on the Island, and this girl does not, so Lurch and I asked him if he wanted to carpool with us. It was good, we got to know him a bit better.

Since then we've been sure to invite him to things, and he's come one other time. I am, however, getting the vibe that he might be interested in me. Cool.

Last night over dinner I mentioned that Musician had been checking out my legs at church on Sunday. Well, it turns out that Musician and this guy happen to have the same first name, and so Lurch asked, "Which one?" I said, Musician, and carried on with the story. Then I asked, "Is there something I should know about the other guy?"

Lurch is of the opinion that he might be a little interested in me. His rationle went like this: The guy is super shy, and really shy guys (speaking from personal experience) tend to like dominant women. And, I am, apparently, a little bit dominant. (We laughed long and hard at the "little bit" part of that equation.)

Tonight I called him (not Lurch) up to ask him to join us for dinner, understanding that he was probably at work still since he's an accountant, and, well, in case you missed it, it's tax season here in the good ol' US of A. I got his machine and left a message inviting him to dinner unless he was still at work, in which case, best of luck with that. He sent me a text indicating that yes, he was still at work, and probably would be until 10 but we should have fun.

Good times. It's good when someone (realtivly) normal is interested in you. I like that feeling. Also, since he's been around me for 6 months or so I don't have to be worried that he won't like what he eventually sees. If he has half a brain in his head he knows exactly what he would be getting into.

Right in the Face

I have been having sound card drama on my computer for about a month. I bought a new sound card ($160) and it didn't work (didn't have RCA jacks), so I bought another one ($200), and it didn't work, either (didn't have RCA IN jacks), so finally I picked up a third (albeit much less expensive, $20 this time) card. I brought it home, installed it, and was miffed when I was unable to get it to work.

Lurch is a hardware guy, so I had him come over to fix my computer. Now, let me just say, I hate having to ask people to fix my computer, there is something so pathetic about a computer geek being unable to fix their own machine. So, I was, clearly, at the end of my rope. He was unable to fix it.

He took the new card out, and assumed the old one would just work (as it should have). It didn't. So I have been without sound for a month. It's killing me. I remembered that I had to find a driver online when I first bought my machine, so I went in search of the link in my blog. Well, I found it here, but tragically, the link I had was broken. Saddened I set out to find the correct driver on the foxconn website.

I couldn't find it.

Tonight at dinner I was whinning to Lurch about my problem, when I remembered that at one point I had to download a driver for a European model. Tragically, I remembered it was for my printer. We also talked about the link I have on my blog. He suggested that I search Google Groups, because often people have similar problems and post their solutions. I reassured him that I had, and, infact, people were coming to my blog and following said link.

Well, that got me thinking about things. When I got home I checked out the broken link and discovered it was for a different model of mother board, specifically, the 760GXK8MC-RS insead of the -S I have. Subtle, but vital.

I downloaded the new driver (found here) and, once again, have sound on my computer! Wooo HOOO!!! Stupid solution had been staring me right in the face for weeks, and I just had to think about it differently to find it.

Shipped!

Today we shipped a major component of the biggest project on which I've been working. It was a huge milestone and came as the result of many, many late nights and hitting the hay at 1:30 am.

Why am I still on and blogging right now when I should be in bed celebrating in my sleep? I dunno. Felt like sharing I guess.

Good night!

Tired

In a meeting at work today one of my coworkers said to our manager, "Can we hire someone to help Granola with her work? She's doing tons of stuff and always looks tired."

I'm not sure how I feel about "always look[ing] tired" but, I'm glad that someone else is seeing the amount of work I put in. I hope my manager took the underlying message: Granola is a bit over worked.

Hair

Lurch and I were out at dinner this evening and when we headed out to our cars he said to me, "Granola, I just found one of your hairs in my pocket!" I laughed when he went on to say, "We hang out way too much!"

Not that it's going to change anytime soon.

Geek Jokes

You knew it would happen.

Last month I was teaching Sunday School when I said, "Sometimes trials come to strengthen, or even test your faith" and wrote on the chalkboard:

"faith = trials"

One of my friends who is a huge nerd (he's actually a programmer at the EvilEmpire, he really needs a blog name. Let me know if you think of one. Oh, he's also the one who dared me to write this poem.) pipped up, "Hey, that should be equals-equals (==)." I thought about it for a minute and said, "Well, it could actually be both, since it's both a comparator and an assignment." We laughed. Lurch laughed. Everyone else stared at us blankly.

For those of you who don't get it (all of you?) allow me to explain why it's so funny to us. In programming, as in algebra, if you have 'x = 5' then essentially you're saying that every time you see 'x' you replace it with '5'. So, faith = trials means that faith IS trials. Every time you have faith you will also have trials. Makes sense, yes?

Ok, now == in programming is a comparator operator, much like <=. So, if I say 'x <= 5' I'm asking: 'is x less than or equal to 5?' If I say 'x == 5' I'm asking (you guessed it) 'is x equal to 5?' So, by saying 'faith == trials' I'm asking, 'does faith equal trials?'

Trust me, it's funny.

Here's another joke that will lose all humor once I explain it:
Tonight the same geek friend and I are sitting around talking at some one's party. A girl we're with says something, and I kind of gave her a weird look. He turned to her (they're really good friends) and said, "Right now she's filing your name under 'idiot.'"

I smiled at him sweetly and said, "Actually, it's a hash, so it just collided with your name."

He pretended it wasn't funny, but then started to laugh. "That's actually pretty funny!" he exclaimed joyously. We tried to explain it to those around us. They didn't get it.

Here's why it's funny:
A hash function is a way of storing things in pairs. So, if you wanted to keep track of your friends by their name and a defining personality characteristic you might have (which means, Sally is fun) and and . You don't want to save your friends by their names because you want to just look up their personalities and know who to invite to your party. If you stored them alphabetically, then you'd have to look at Jane to know she's boring. However, if you store them in a hash table you just say, "I'm looking for all my friends who are fun" and you get a list of people who are fun. When more than one attribute (person, in this case) has the same key (personality characteristic), it's considered a collision. So, essentially, I was telling, "Yup, she's an idiot, but so are you." Ahh, good times.

Trust me, it's funny, too.

Ok, ok, that's it for geek jokes tonight. Sleep well!

Hookie

Friday I decided to play hookie. I'm sick and tired of the incompetent guys I work with not getting their job done so that when they finally turn it over to me I have half the time to do my work, and they've done their bit so shoddily that I have to repeat my work (at least one full sweep). We had a deadline Tuesday (next week), that I was positive we weren't going to make, and since I'm sick and tired of working until 1:30 am 4 nights a week, I decided to play hookie.

I, apparently, don't know how.

I went online to spread the word that I'd be out, and my Project Manager pinged me and asked me to call him. I did and he expressed his opinion that we weren't going to make said deadline and I should just take it easy. I agreed. Then I asked him one question and in the 3 minutes it took to verify that I was wrong we discovered a huge problem and I ended up working about 5 hours anyway. Yeah, that sucked. A lot.

Oh well. I guess I'm just not cut out for the life of a work skipper. Tragic, eh?

Single

Not in the "Hey, I'm not dating anyone, and that's not really news" sort of way, but rather in the much heavier, "Wow. I'm single" sort of way.

I happened into lunch with Musician today and as I sat across from the table trying to figure out what's wrong with him (he's been acting odd lately, and I'm worried about him. I don't usually worry about people, so this is concerning), and getting nothing, I thought to myself: yeah, not going to happen there. I just have to accept it.

Then, finding my friend's wife's blog, and learning they have a kid.

It just hit me: I'm really really single.

It's been 3 months since Musician decided he would rather be with Nurse. 3 years since GayPat decided he was truely, truely gay. 11 months since ExOfNote tried to kill himself. 11 months since I've been so deeply, emotionally, single. And I-don't-know-how-long since he stopped loving me.

I should be moving on, none of the men I've loved/love reciprocate any more, or, rather, still love me enough; yet, for some reason, there is a little string attached to my heart that tugs me back to a place of loneliness—to that hilltop of solitude where I sit overlooking the happypeople and wondering why I can't be one of them.

I gaze down from my perch and see them running about their busy lives. I see them happy. I see them sad, but not truely sad. Mostly, I see them not alone. I wish I weren't alone.

As my sorrow settled on me this evening I called Lurch, I needed sorbet and a shoulder. He didn't answer. I went for a drive. I needed to find that hill of solitude here. I didn't find it. What I did find, however, is that I have no one to whom I can turn. I do such an amazing job of keeping people at a perscribed distance from my heart, that when I need them, there is no one there. The hill truely is empty, and I truely am an island, alone unto myself.

Closure?

Many, many years ago I nearly fell in love with a friend while in University. Sometimes I wonder if not holding on to him (implying that I ever had hold of him—I didn't) was one of the worst mistakes in my life (up to that point). But, I had ExOfNote, who was sort of more like OnAgainOffAgainOfNote, and he had a girlfriend or two. Suffice it to say: nothing happened.

Tonight my thoughts went out to him. (Hmm, odd, it's been a year (almost to the day) since I last really thought of him. I wonder why now, no matter.) Once again, I opened google and searched for him. This time, however, I found his blog. Correction. I found his wife's blog.

I'm so glad to hear that they're still happily together, and even more wonderful: they have a 1 year old son. He's beautiful, and has his daddy's eyes.

Well, that's closure for you. Not always exactly how you pictured it, but usually for the better. Here's wishing them both an eternity of love and happiness.

Elegance and the Paper Cup Solution

Elegance, not just another word to describe opulence, but, rather, a compliment, which, in the computer science world means: that something is "simple and precise and lucid." In short, to call a solution "elegant" is to pay it high praise. Not something just thrown around lightly.

Last week I bought a pair of headphones because my old ones had been shocking me for months. No, no, literally, months. I just hadn't bothered to replace them. When I was at Target, however, opportunity struck, and I made the extravagant purchase. When I took the to the office, however, I was sad to discover that the cord was three inches shorter than my previous headphones. Why is this a problem? Allow me to answer that by first telling you my previous set up. the headphone cord connected to my laptop, said cord then ran under my (separate) keyboard, then up to my ears. The 3 inches allowed for a lot of movement, and kept the cord out of my way. The new, shorter, cord was, simply put, too short to go under the keyboard. It also restricts my movement. This left me no choice, the cord had to go over my keyboard. A new problem now arose: the stupid cord kept getting in the way of my typing. Enter the paper cup mentioned in the title, stage right. I had a paper cup sitting on my desk, and decided to rest the cord on said cup to keep it elevated off of my keyboard. It worked. It worked so well, in fact, that I cut a couple of holes through the cup to keep the cord in place.

Yesterday one of my coworkers was chatting with me and noticed the headphone/paper cup sculpture. "Why," he asked, "is there a paper cup attached to the cord of your headphones?"

I explained my logic to him to which he replied: "That's a very elegant solution."

Yea! What a nice compliment!

By the by, I related this story to Lurch. His reaction? "You can tell you're an engineer. You think like one!" I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I'm going to take that as a compliment, too.

How Single I Am

My pi Day (March 14th, get it? 3.14... pi... hahah! Oh, and it happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday, too) celebrations included (rather, were limited to) sending text messages to all my geek friends wishing them a "Happy pi Day." I sent the message to one of my university friends and he replied with the same. I then asked him about the wife and kids. He hates text messaging, so he called and we chatted while I scrubbed a pan or two. After a bit he indicated that he had some new pictures of his daughters that he would send me (they're actually really cute kids, I don't mind getting pictures of them at all). I chuckled and replied that I would love to reciprocate, but I have none of my own.

"Soon enough, gGirl," he reassured me using my college nickname, "soon enough!"

Laughingly I responded, "Do you know how single I am? Let me share with you how single I am!"

And, before I could express the level of singleness in which I existed he said to me, "You're in the kitchen cleaning pots and pans instead of your husband doing them, that's how single you are!"

I had nothing to say. That's exactly how single I am.

Secrets

Friday after dinner we went to listen to Musician's band play. Nurse was there, of course, so I said hi and we chit-chatted for a while. On their break Musican came over to talk to the group of us who were gathered there. He noticed my two coworkers and asked what the occasion was. I explained that we had gone out to dinner and he asked where we went. I told him, and kind of gave him directions. Then I said, "It was on Capitol Hill (a neighborhood in downtown Seattle), there's an Indian restaurant nearby." What I didn't say was, "that one that we went to for lunch that one time. You remember? You picked it." Being no dummy he picked up on it right away. Then, the brat did something highly annoying, he started smiling, as he internally laughed at the situation. Catching himself he started to try to not smile. Yeah, that resulted in the same behavior from yours truely. Drat. Oh well. It would serve him right if Nurse decided to get curious and figure out exactly what happend there. I'm sure he hasn't told her, and has, instead, allowed her to conclude whatever she would.

On Saturday I was talking to Ninja and she told me that her sister said to her afterwards, "I don't think that Nurse girl likes Granola all that much."

Ninja queried, "Why do you say that?"

"She was glaring at Granola the whole night!!"

Sad. I thought we got along fine, all things considered. I mean, I've been really nice to her, and she reciprocated. Maybe it is all a show on both of our parts. That said, Nurse is overly sure to remind me that they're together in a "casual" way. For example, when I aske her what time she got to the gig on Friday she replied, "We got here at such and such a time." She later was sure to tell me that, "We're learning to Salsa, but it sucks, 'cause everywhere we go that we could Salsa he's playing." Ahh, yes, because some how, for a minute there, I strangly forgot that you're dating. Thanks.

You know what Sir Walter Scott says, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive." One of these days these little games Musican plays is going to jump up and bite him square on the butt. I wish I could be around for it.

Queen Sheba

On Friday my Ethiopian coworker wanted to take a couple of us out to Ethiopian food. I'm all for trying new foods, I mean, really, I am. But, well, let me tell you a little story.

Once upon a time I had a roommate from Zimbabwe. She was really cool and would cook for me on occasion. The food was always really heavy, really greasy (lamb or goat, I believe) and really, really gross.

Given that, and the proximity of Ethiopia to Zimbabwe, you can understand my trepidation, as food knows no political borders. (Yes, I know they're not that close, but they're close enough!)

But, I had a plan: dinner right after work, so if it turned out to be horrible I could declare I wasn't that hungry and pick at it. Turns out it was great! I picked my plate clean. Nice.

They have this crazy bread that is nothing like Naan (Indian flat bread) that you eat with (they actually provided no silverware). The bread is really spongy, kind of salty, but mostly fairly tasteless. The rest of the food was spiced closer to Indian than Zimbabwean.

So, I decided I like Ethiopian food. Maybe I don't like Zimbabwean. That, or my roommate was a lousy cook, which I never really thought of before Friday night.

Oh, and the place is called (in case you're totally daft) Queen Sheiba located at 916 E John St, Seattle, WA. That would be in the heart of Capitol Hill, in case you're curious.

The Two Month Experiement

I have long proclaimed that "I'm just that granola!" A number of months ago I decided to put my granolaness to the test. The experiment went thus: No shaving—armpits OR legs— for 2 months. At the end of that time frame I could save, or not.

I discovered I am, apparently, not that granola! It would appear that my leg-shaving threshold hovers right around 3-4 weeks. My armpits, however, would lead me to believe that I am that granola! I shaved only because I was going to have a massage the next day, and figured it was only polite.

That was Feburary.

Yesterday I was out with Ninja and declared that I needed to get a massage. She gave me a line on a place I could go. I thanked her and said with a slight grimace, "Well, I didn't shave my armpits today, so maybe I shouldn't."

"Meh!" She replied, "I wouldn't worry about it."

"Allow me to rephrase that: For the last month!"

"Oh. Well, so?"

Yeah, I guess I'm more European than Granola. Shh! Don't tell, I don't wanna change the name of my blog.

You Shall Henceforth Be: Green

Growing up Mumsy was blessed with five very different, yet equally, well, unkempt, children. Early on she decided that color coding was the way to do things. My oldest sister was Yellow, my next sister was Blue (I believe), I was Green, our brother Red, and the Baby was, well, I can't remember. Mumsy will, though, and I'll update this when she corrects me.

The point of all this was: we had colors. Now, when I say colors I don't mean to say (or imply, really) that Mumsy dressed us in our colors (that wasn't the case, at least not exclusively), no, she was far more systematic. We each had our own Tupperware dishes: My plate, bowl, cup, spoon, fork, and even knife, were green. My oldest sister's were yellow. She didn't stop there, however. My toothbrush was green. My brother's red. This worked out really well: never did we wonder whose cup was whose, mine was the green one.

Mumsy's organizational skills didn't stop there, however. We also had 'days.' On your day there were many privileges, there were also chores. Mumsy put just the right amount of effort into calculating our 'days.' The oldest was Monday, the next Tuesday, predictably I followed with Wednesday, my brother got Thursday, and Midge, as I'm sure you've calculated by now, was Friday. Included in the privileges were: who got to ride in the front seat (that ended virtually all arguments, until, of course, Saturday), we also got to, well, I can't remember any other privileges. Chores included: dishes. My mother had a very modern dishwasher, she called it "Whose 'day' is it?". On numerous occasions (mid our whining that we always had to do the dishes) Mumsy could be counted on to exclaim: 'I've done my fair share of dishes! That's why I had kids, so I never had to do them again!' No one said her logic was infallible. All of that said, Wednesday was the best day to have, especially once my siblings and I started turning 12. Wednesday night was youth group night, and everyone 12-18 was encouraged to attend. Well before I was 12 I was riding along with Mumsy or Pops to take the older kids to 'mutual' (as it was called). Hey, my mommy didn't raise no fool (well, she did, but I'm not it)!

In case you're curious: my toothbrush is still green. My dishes, however, aren't.

In The Hospital

Well, I finally took my car to the car doctor, and had him admitted into the car hospital. I think I forgot to mention it: A week to the day from when I bought my car I got in a fight with a Hummer. Not surprisingly, my little Subaru lost. I found someone to fix it, and kept meaning to take it in. Finally, I resolved I would take it to him at the end of February/early March. It ended up being a good thing that I waited because on Wednesday (a week ago) I got in a fight with a retaining wall. I lost that one, too.

I cried. Bitter tears of frustration.

In total I was quoted a little over a grand ($1000 for the work and "probably another $100 for the molding"), hopefully he comes in under that. I'm not holding my breath. I'm so glad that I got a bonus this month, 'cause there it went!

Word is: I might be getting it back tomorrow night. That would be most wonderful, 'cause I'm hating having no car.

What's that? You want to see pictures? Oh, alright. Here's the first incident.

Notice how the grill of the H2 fits oh-so snugly over the bumper of the average Subaru.

Here's Wednesday's damage. Two doors. Can you believe this is costing me as much as the hatch? Yeah. That sucks.
Not that much work, you say (I tend to agree), but take a look at this close up. I particularly like the gouge that came off when I had to back up off the corner of the wall. That sucked. A lot.

Dear-heart

Wednesday night was Temple night. It was also one of the worst days of the year thus far. Nevermind all that. The Temple was great!

Afterwards we went out for ice cream and Musician and I ended up sitting at the same table chatting about politics. He made an assertion, I countered it, and he completly disagreed with what I said. Shortly thereafter he said, "That's because, dear-heart, blah blah blah." I really hate it when he says that to me. There's a bit of condecention in his tone, and, grr, I just really hate it.

Today while we were chatting he brought up that conversation and retracted part of what he said. I took the opportunity to say to him, "You know when you call me 'dear-heart'..."

"Yeah, it totally ticked you off!" He said with a smile.

"Yes, it did." Then I, impressivly enough, took the oportunity to tell him that I really hated it when he called me that, especially his inflection when saying it. He indicated that it wasn't his intention to be condisending and apologized a few times. Then, he did something I hardly expected: he thanked me for letting him know. I don't know if he was thanking me so that he could be more careful in the way he talks to people when in debates, or because he'd rather know than it ruin our friendship. Either way, I'm glad I told him.

Who's 'We'?

Last night Ninja, Lurch and I wanted to hang out together. Correction: Lurch wanted to hang out with Ninja, and I was the catalyst. Ninja, on the other hand, wanted to hang out, and she didn't much care with whom.

She called me up and we chatted about things we could do. Eventually, we decided that going to Seattle and listening to live Jazz would be a great activity. I found one thing that looked interesting, but decided to call up Musician and ask him if he knew of anything else. I gave him a call, but not surprisingly (considering it was Saturday night) he didn't answer.

Today at church he apologized for not returning my call, since he didn't get the message until 11, and couldn't think of anything we'd want to do at that hour. I told him not to worry about it, as we found something else to do. He asked what and I said that we ended up at Ninja's friend's place watching a movie. (It's interesting to note here that his and my second 'date' was the same activity at the same location. Nice...) Because I am who I am, and I still like the stupid boy I was careful to not say names during the course of the conversation—hoping that he'd get curious enough to have it pique his interest, but not curious enough to ask. It turns out we're good enough friends that he had no problem asking. "Who's 'we'?" he asked, with a hopeful (for me) half-smile on his face. "Oh," I replied, rattling off some names. He kept waiting for the "...and some random boy..." but that wasn't forthcoming. I smiled at the pause as he waited expectantly, "I'd love to say 'and some cute boy,' but there wasn't one." "Well," he replied, "Lurch and LittleBrother." "Yeah, like I said..."

I guess I'm glad that a part of him still cares enough to, well, care. I just wish he cared more.

After church I was chatting with him some more and asked how Nurse is doing. "I don't know. I haven't really seen her." I instantly felt bad for him and was about to apologize generally for the whole situation, then he said, "I saw her Friday night, and she was good, but yesterday I was too busy. So, I guess she's doing well."

Frankly, I don't know what that was supposed to be about. I wonder if he was just testing the waters, but I'm really not sure. Blargh! I wish I didn't care.