02 May 2006
I saw the aftermath of a terrible car accident on the way to work. Right outside of the Burrard SkyTrain station. They had Burrard Street completely blocked off near there. Even to bus traffic.
From the looks of it I would guess that someone definitely lost their life in it. The car looked like a crushed aluminum can. The top had been cut off to get the occupants out.
I truly hope that everyone survived.
There is nothing quite like witnessing the after effects of, or being a part of, a disaster, no matter the scale, to help bring into focus exactly what your priorities in life are.
01 May 2006
I followed the fallen blossom petals to work today. I walked with them along the sidewalk as they danced and ran with the wind like a meandering stream of white and pink. I watched them through the window of the bus as they swirled on currents of air.
I think that today is the coldest it has ever been since I moved to Vancouver. A frigid nine degrees celsius… I may never need to wear a jacket again. Perhaps the trees were fooled into thinking that fall was on its way and shed their blossoms.
Life out here is good. It’s laid back. It moves slow. I can see myself here for a long time. I still smile everytime I see the mountains. Such ancient majesty. Towering peaks wearing scarves of white snow.
It’s funny. I loved Montreal because it was so fast paced. Everyone was in a hurry all of the time. I enjoy Vancouver for the exact opposite reason. I guess it just boils down to enjoying a life that isn’t empty. I wonder if my four years of living in nowhere will ever leave me? Four years of waking up every morning and my first thought being “I don’t want to go to work.”
I have never worked anywhere else where they have asked me “Are you working at the capacity that is right for YOU? (i.e. putting in a balanced number of hours, appropriate to your workload, and in alignment with your task commitments, career interests and personal priorities)”
Happy first day of the fifth month everyone out there!
28 Apr 2006
Yesterday started off really poorly. By the end of the day things were going really well though :)
It all started off with the student loan people and the goverment messing me over as usually. About a year ago they integrated two of my student loans into a single loan. Well, that sucked. I had to reschedule payments etc. Recently they de-integrated the loan back into two individual loans, and they didn’t tell me :p I wasn’t aware of this until I applied for a line of credit and it got turned down because of some outstanding payments needing to be made on one of the sperated loans. The part that really drives me up the wall over this is that I have the money in the bank to completely pay off the whole loan, but it has already marred my credit it seems.
I had to take a day off work and spend hours on the phone getting it all sorted out. At one point I literally spent 23 conescutive minutes bouncing around their automated phone system.
The good points of the day were very good though. When it was over with the student loan people I went back to bed for a couple of hours. I decided it was an order-in night and ordered in some pizza which was pretty good. Then in World of Warcraft our raid group got our first Nefarian kill! To top it all off he dropped the Breastplate of Wrath, my 8th and final piece for my Wrath armor. After all of that, when I got fully buffed and used all of my trinkets and abilities I broke 15,000 hit points :D
24 Apr 2006
Don’t let me hold something so delicate
Shattered with a word
Don’t say a thing
As we get closer and closer
Damn this is gonna hurt
I see everything differently than every one else. I really don’t know why. I don’t know how I came to see things the way that I do.
Part of me wishes that I didn’t see the world the way that I do. That I could see it the same way that everyone else does so that I could fit in better. At the same time, I love the way that I see things. I think that the world is a lot simpler to me in many ways.
This has just sort of been becoming more and more obvious to me lately. I’m hanging out more with my friends both out here in Vancouver and online in World of Warcraft. The more I hang out with them the more that it dawns on me how little I really have in common with most of them. My views on humanity, society, beauty, happiness, life, friendship, honor, love, right down to my taste in movies tends to be quite different.
I’m not complaining about the friendships. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I’m glad to know all of these people. I think in some way these diverse friendships fill a void in my life that I’m not fully aware of.
I’m not exactly sure what the proper word for it is, but I have always been whatever that word is. I am someone who gives you what you expect out of me.
If you expect me to be a great listener and a great friend, then that’s what I am.
If you expect me to be an amazing programmer, then that’s what I’ll be.
If you expect me to be the uber 1337 tank in WoW, then that’s what I’ll do.
If you expect me to be an asshole, then I’ll do my best at it.
If you expect me to be a risk taker, then I’ll take risks.
If you expect nothing of me, I don’t know what you get. Maybe that’s when you get the real me. Whoever that may be.
Rest well this night.
20 Apr 2006
It is what I do. When I go to a new place I always find errors in their systems. The teams generaly don’t believe that it is an error in their code. I can relate to that. There is a general “I wrote that. It has to be perfect.” arrogance that seems to go with the programming territory.
Myself, I don’t really care. If something is going wrong I always check my code first. I know I make mistakes. If you see me do something wrong, or you know a better way to do something, please, I beg you, let me know. How else would I ever learn?
Just three weeks into my time here I found an error in some of the core code shared among many titles. A farely big bug that tramples memory under fairly common circumstances. It took a week for them to verfiy, accept, and find a solution for the error.
I love it though. Hunting for bugs and smashing them. Sometimes I think I should start a consulting company that specializes in finding and fixing errors in software solutions.
Most consultants write custom software solutions or adapt current solutions to a companies specific needs. That kind of work really doesn’t appeal to me though. Mostly because when I see something that is wrong I am compelled to fix it.
When I was working at my last job I honestly felt like I was becoming a worse programmer every single day. Like I was degenerating. I am very happy to find that was not the case. I just wasn’t challenged in any way there. Now that I have a challenge things are clicking again. All of the ability and knowledge is still there. The hunger to learn and improve has been renewed.
I’m really happy here so far. Although I still have to say that my dream job is being able to work from home or wherever I may happen to be at any point in time. I like the idea of being able to set my own schedule. If I wanted to stay up until 3 am and start at noon the next day there wouldn’t be any repercussions.
Maybe I need to sell off the bulk of my posessions. Hole up in some tiny apartment. Take a sabbatical from this “work” thing and finally write that damn book. That elemental sinew of creativity that keeps pulling me inside out.
The little voice in the back of my head that keeps whispering “There must be more” just never shuts up. No matter how far I go, how much I do, or how much I get; it is always there whispering. Telling me not to stop. A greedy little id have I.
