You WILL RESPECT my AUTHORITAH!

Right now work is severely hit-and-miss. A particular customer is causing a series of problems.

Generally, they’re demanding more of me than I feel is right. Put another way, I am held to be their bitch.

There is a long, dreary backstory that I will omit. Suffice it to say, we cannot truly rein them in without becoming aggressively hostile; which we’ve already started planning, but these things take time.

This comes down to ego, though. They are crossing a line, to be sure; but that line is created and maintained entirely by my planet-sized ego. I know it unfair (foolish, immature, stupid, whatever) to bitch about moan about being forced, at times, to do things generally held to be beneath you, at your job; but at the same time, there’s a fuckin’ limit.

They are a very large customer upon whose monthly income we depend, so it’s hard to say “GFY” (where by “hard” I mean “impossible in a practical sense, and stupid in any sense”). We have customers we would fire, save for our own laziness; we can’t afford to let these guys go.

So I continue to be treated like a fucking intern, on call to serve my master. The daily laundry-list of menial intern jobs grows. (It should be noted: they had us hire them an intern, who they then ‘fired’ - by which I mean, broke their contractual obligation - so that I would be responsible for these tasks).

Most annoying is we just don’t know how to effectively cope. We’re a small company; putting my kneepads on daily for these guys is bad in the sense it only helps today and not next year, which is how small companies stay small.

Camping, Trout Pond WV

Set here. Trout Pond makes Bull Run Regional Park look like the back-country. The bathrooms are immaculate; the sites are immaculate; the trails are wide open, clean, and easily navigable. I cannot recommend this enough for those looking to have a camping experience that also has nice flush toilets.

We’re probably going on one more trip, assuming our lovely global-warming fall stays as nice as it is.

It was enlightening, as well, to ascend through the mountain road to the park/campground and see what parts of West Virginia are becoming. You’ll have a plot of land with a dilapidated, crumbling house, someone clearly in the grip of stereotypical WV poverty. Up the road a quarter mile is someone’s weekend get-away house, immaculately manicured property, just-detailed SUV in the paved driveway, $1000 grill out front, satellite dish, freshly scrubbed Mom and Dad and Susie and Billy having breakfast on the porch.

Along the trail we found expended shotgun shells; I’m guessing there’s enough poverty that in the lean times, people hunt along these public trails (esp. when the parks/campgrounds are closed to the public).

One fucking point. ONE FUCKING POINT

Did a PFT this morning; scored 149, which puts me in tier 3, the lowest, by one fucking point. One more sit-up, one more pull-up, a few seconds off the run, and I’d be in tier 2; low, but tier 2 nonetheless. A bit of a recent personal best, doing 3 miles in 26:30. Previous 3-mile was 26:55 a week or so ago, so I’m making pretty good progress.

On the plus side, though, it means in a week I’ll be in tier 2. I joke that I’m physically 19 again; not entirely true, but I can at least hold my own against those fucking kids. (Calculate your score here.)

A little more time, and I’ll be at or under my age group’s probability for lung cancer, and it’s likely greater than 85% of lung volume lost to smoking will be recovered. Then 2 years or so after that, I’ll be at or under my age group’s probability for heart disease.

I worked out the other day after looking at this, that I have about 15k days left in my life; all things being equal, I’ll die at age 76, in 2049. The more I think about that, the more I think, it’s worth all this. I can push that number higher.

Wikidrinking

Needed:
probably at least 4 players
booze
internet acccess

To Play:
determine who goes first by some method (group decides). The first player then picks another player to challenge. The challenged then states a word or phrase, which is searched in Wikipedia.

If the page is exists and is “clean” - no defacements and generally useful information, is not recommended for deletion/proposed to be merged, then the challenged player must take a drink.

If the page exists and is obviously defaced, the challenger drinks.

If the page exists but is a stub (one or two lines w/ the Wikipedia stub alert), the challenged player drinks.

If the two begin to argue about what determines “generally useful information”, another player may declare “nerd fight!”, and both players drink.

if the page does not exist, the challenger drinks. If the page exists but is a one-line stub/summary, the challenged player drinks. If the challenged player is suspected of deliberately choosing too-obscure search terms another player may declare “googlefight”. If a simple majority of other players agree, challenger drinks twice.

In any event, drinking ends your turn, play passes to the left.

Special Conditions: If a challenge term is in your browser history, you chug.

Call for our rate sheet

In 2005, my girlfriend (now wife) and I decided to take a vacation to New Orleans. We all know how that turned out.

(Nothing happened in 2006, we camped a number of times but didn’t take a real vacation, cause we got married.)

In 2007, my wife and I decided to take a vacation to the “Mexican Riviera”, aka Riviera Maya, south of Cancun. Yeah, same thing.

So anyway if you’d like to not have your city, state, or region smashed to pieces by a Cat 5 hurricane, drop me a line and we won’t plan any vacations there. Our rates are affordable.

(In all seriousness, I think the worst might miss where we’d be going, and we weren’t going until November, anyway, so maybe we’ll luck out.)

How soon we forget

So I went to the doctor today. Everything’s fine, don’t fret. She was going over my chart and remarked, “I shouldn’t even recognize you”.

Oh? “You’ve lost some weight.”

Yeah. Just curious, though, how much did I weigh last time I was here?

“273.”

Oh. Um, wow. (I previously marked 257 as my high water mark; as of this doctor visit, I was 177 @ 14.5% body fat)

So, yeah.

In other news, she kicked some statistic that it takes on average 3 years to make a lifestyle change permanent. So only another couple years of forcing myself to go to the gym every day before it starts to become less effort. Hooray?

Camping, Wolf’s Gap

We went camping at Wolf’s Gap, and hiked the Big Schloss trail. Pics in the usual place.A couple notes.1, I was not “selling tickets to the gun show”, rather, trying to even out my trucker tan. 2, this is a pretty nice place, but a little more remote than some other sites (no flush toilets, etc). 3, the Big Schloss hike is excellent, with only about a mile or so of uphill; it’s like a very solid hour on the elliptical set on high incline and a decent resistance. (Total distance is about 4 miles). 4, plan on bringing your own firewood, or an axe/camp shovel and foraging along the road for downed trees. (This is probably illegal, but oh well)We had a great time, of course. Great eats and blueberry wine (hence the deranged looks). 

Camping

Going camping this weekend.

I love the pre-camping packing, as we put the great pile of gear by the front door, ready to be loaded into the truck. (I should note, this is car-camping, not hiking in the backcountry)

3 large tupperware-type boxes of kit (cooking, dry goods, misc gear like flashlights), self-inflating air mattresses, Coleman stove, and more.

There’s a tremendous feeling that, “I could handle any sort of emergency”. “Something” could “happen”, and within a few minutes, we could pack up and leave town. (I think I could load the truck up in maybe 10 minutes?)

Of course we live in Northern Virginia; it’s unlikely anything could ever happen that would require us to flee to the Shenandoah or similar remote environs.

But I have to say: it does feel good that, if we had to, we could.

iPhones by Wednesday …

We’re getting our iPhones tomorrow, once we work out how to have the company pay for them all (and assuming there are still 4 available in NoVA, and we can figure out a way to get 4 of them). So it’s Xmas in July, really. Like a kid I’m counting the minutes.

Tog posted a bit about the iPhone:

It really is wonderful that, in an industry rife with companies striving for mediocrity, one company is still doing things right.

But he’s committing one of the classic blunders; no, not starting a land war in Asia. He is confusing mediocrity with worse-is-better, although in practice they’re the same thing. The Zune pretty much is a non-starter vs iPod, but that gives it better survival characteristics, as it’s built on the computer virus that is Windows. As I shopped around for a new phone for my wife, I marvelled at the insipid, awful design, only to remember, “no one gives a shit”, because phones are built on the virus of fickle, non-technical consumers.

Also, I think I really need to start working on dealing with my depression. I really can’t continue to focus effectively on the physical if the mental isn’t 100%, too. I’m pretty sure my continual ennui at work is not some vague metaphysical dissatisfaction, but a pronounced downspike. Rough seas ahead; but if I can remake my body, I guess I can do the same to my brain. Right?

I am a useless nerd.

You see, instead of waiting in line for iPhone, I have to write a bunch of code, rack up some machines, and GET WORK DONE YOU WORTHLESS BASTARDS.

There, I said it. I feel better. You can go back to ignoring me now; tomorrow you’ll have an iPhone and I won’t.