Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

The Upside of Being Non-competative

Random Thoughts

Throughout the course of my life, I have been fairly uncompetative. That does not mean that I did not play sports or participate in things, but largely I never cared how I did. There is a huge upside to this: If I lose, I don’t care.

Ultimately, its that attitude that has gotten me through a large amount of various crappy things I have dealt with in my life. Most things I can just shrug off and move on. Even if something crushes my spirit, I never fail to get up, dust myself off, and get back on. I’ve written here before about the many way in which life has kicked me in the teeth while I was down, and yet, here I am, still breathing, still moving along, and pretty happy.

There is a major downside to all this, while the upside is that nothing really truly gets me down, there is the issue that I also never really win. Have you ever been a part of something, a sports team perhaps, that wins it all? I haven’t. Not once. Not because I couldn’t, I’ve certainly got the talent for a good deal of things, but I just have never had the drive. Yesterday, I watched the season finale of Rollergirls on A&E. It was the championship game, and when it came down to the end, an extremely close game, and the Rhinestone Cowgirls won, and when they showed the girls taking their victory lap and cheering and hugging and all that, I felt a wave of excitement and sadness. It was fun to watch people win something they tried so very hard at, and it was sad because I know I have never tried that hard.

So the question is, do I give up a lifestyle of a good level of happiness to risk deep crushing sadness in pursuit of ultimate victory? I almost think I would, but at the age of 32, what could I start now that has a chance of leading to that kind of a win?

Buying a Home

Random Thoughts

First I want to make a distinction: House versus Home. I do not want to buy a house. A house is the place you reside. I want to buy a home. A home is where you live, raise a family, good times, bad times, life, love, laughter. A home is where your heart is, a house is the physical dwelling that contains it.

I want to buy a home.

However, the current housing market disagrees with me. It has become appearant that I could afford to buy a house only if my plan is to turn around and sell it in a year or two. Every real estate agent and article for the Atlanta area talks about how the market is ripe for investment. But I do not want to invest money into a house, I want to invest into a home. I do not want to buy with the intent to sell. I want to buy with the intent to spend twenty years there, more if I can, less if life turns out that way.

Richard Bartle, a guy whose blog I read because he’s a game designer and often has interesting stuff to say or link to, wrote about the current situation in England (where he lives). I found this extremely interesting because it resembles my own experiences here in the States.

You see, I currently rent a 1,600 square foot townhome apartment for $850 a month. As I have been house hunting, I have not been able to find a 1,600 square foot house (or townhome for that matter) to own for less that $1,200 a month in mortgage payments unless I wish to live so far outside Atlanta that I will spend 5 hours a day in traffic and easily $300 a month in gas and parking (I currently ride public transportation, but the buses only go so far). All in all, its at least $400 a month cheaper for me to continue renting, and more realistically it is about $800 a month cheaper. That is just messed up. By renting and living close to the bus line, I literally cut my living expenses in half.

But its not just that I cut my expenses in half… if I was doing that and pocketting the extra money for savings, that would be awesome. But the truth is that I could not afford (and when I say I, I mean “my wife and I”) to be spending that $1,500+ per month. That $800 I save is being spent paying other bills and expenses. Sure, I could buy the house… as long as I did not want cable, electricity, or to ever do anything other than work and sit at home.

So why not buy a smaller house? I tried that, but Atlanta is infested with McMansions. You know, where they take a nice quarter acre lot barely big enough for a bungalow, tear down the bungalow and build a 3,000 square foot house that will sell for $800,000 and leaves them with a yard that takes two minutes to cut with a pair of safety scissors and where they can touch the neighbors’ McMansions without losing grip of their own house. And when I have found a small house for sale, well, I already live in a ghetto, I do not want to move next door to a crack house. Besides, if the house is too small, it just ups the expenses since you wind up having to go out more often to get away from each other. And really, 1,600 square feet for 2 people and 2 pets really is not all that big.

Essentially, what I see here is an economic state that encourages lack of assets. Its cheaper to rent than to own. Its cheaper to commit a year at a time (standard lease) than to commit to a 15 or 30 year term (standard loans). In fact, the only way to get a loan on a decent house that is lower than my rent is to do an “interest only” loan, meaning that for the first 5 years or so, I’m not actually buying my home, I’m just renting it from the bank since I’m establishing no equity.

And while I do not wish people to lose money, here’s to hoping that in 2006, the bottom falls out of the real estate market and by August I’ll be able to afford to buy a home.

Killing in the name of God

Random Thoughts

So I read this story. This frightens me because one thing I am constantly being told is that acts of terrorism and violence are acts of fundamentalist Islam, and not of the general Islamic people. But, just like the car bombings, I’m searching around and I’m not finding any Islamic people saying its wrong. At most, they say that “we” do not understand their culture.

And I guess I don’t, nor do I want to. But I suppose that comes with being brought up in the “loving and caring God” Christian household, with being taught that things like the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades were misguided. Now we have an entire section of the world that is literally saying, “if you do not believe in our God, we will kill you and we are right in doing so,” and not enough of the “right” people are condemning it.

I suppose my feelings on this are firmly planted in the idea that silence is acceptance. If something is wrong, and you look the other way, you are passively saying that you agree, that you are going to allow that to happen. So now we have a man who was Muslim and is now Christian, and his countrymen want him to die because turning away from Allah is a sin against Allah that holds the punishment of death.

I keep being told that Islam is a peaceful religion, and yet, especially in the Middle East, its followers cling tightly to the concept of the “infidel”. An infidel is, in short, someone who doesn’t worship Allah. And while over the years Christianity has taken the stance that non-believers should be converted (and yeah, at some periods they felt that conversion through torture and death was okay), but Islam has held to the idea that infidels, non-believers are less than human and not worth converting. Infidels are the enemy, and they are charged by Allah to rid the world of infidels. In Islam, while the treatment of other Islamics might be purely peaceful, killing infidels is rewarded in the afterlife. And the problem is that the fundamentalist Islamics who fully support this are very loud, and the Islamics who condemn this are fairly silent.

Its great that we want to help out developing nations, but should we be helping support a belief system that would prefer to see us dead? I don’t know, but its definately something to think about.

Gangsta Scouts

Random Thoughts

I’m riding MARTA minding my own business when three young African-American males board the train. These men were garbed in traditional “street” attire: pants hanging low, shoes with the laces out, Starter jackets, baseball caps on at angles other than forward or backward. One sat and two stood. And then, they spoke:

Gangsta_1: Yo dawg! Check it. I gotta get home an’ get me some of them cookies, yo!
Gangsta_2: What kind you got?
G1: I got me some thin mints just chilling in the freezer waitin’ for me, yo.
G2: Yeah.. thin mints are da bomb yo. But I didn’t get none this time round.
G1: What you get, dawg?
G2: Listen to this, yo. I got me a couple of boxes of Do-Si-Dos.
Gangsta_3: Man, them peanut butter cookies are good. Damn good.
G2: I know, yo. I gots to find me a way to order more.
G3: I think my sister has some friends who be sellin’ cookies still.
G1: Get some thin mints, yo. And Tagalongs. That shit is crazy good!
G2: Damn, I forgot about them. Shit, I think I could eat nuthin’ but Girl Scout Cookies.
G3: True dat.
G1: No doubt.

The doors opened at the next station and the three young men left, and as they did, one of them said, “Man, I’m hungry now, yo. I don’t think I can wait until my lunch break to eat my cupcakes.”

As the train pulled away from the station, most of the passengers, me included, burst into laughter.

Programming Consistency

Random Thoughts

Sometimes I just feel like if I could get my hands on certain programmers I would slap them silly. Or perhaps kick the living crap out of them.

I’m working with this legacy application. In one table there is a column that is a string. Its an ID number stored with leading zeroes, like: 005, 016, 548. In another table, the same ID is stored as an integer, no leading zeroes. And they are key values in both tables. I am not allowed to correct the tables due to the effect it would have on existing applications.

Its so irritating to have to constantly convert back and forth due to some long ago idiot’s lack of planning. But what really irks me is that these tables were created about six years ago. The guy who did it hasn’t worked here for five years. In all that time, all the expansions and upgrades and applications, no one has been allowed to fix it. This mismatch of data, over five years, has probably resulted in hundreds, thousands of lines of additional code, to the point where fixing it will now cost the company a small fortune to fix. So they don’t fix it.

So, here I am, writing a couple extra lines of code per function, every page of code, probably three or four hours per week of my time, because one guy six years ago made a stupid error.

Ugh.

Vandals

Random Thoughts

If you read my entry about my wedding, you’ll recall that my car got broken into. If you have read my weblog for a decent length of time you’ll know that this is the fourth time in just over a year that my car has been broken into. The first time, they broke a window. The second time, they broke a window and stole my stereo. The third time, they broke a window, bent the dividing bar between two paines of glass and stole my stereo. This last time, they jammed something in the lock, pushed down until the lock popped, then stole my tire gauge, a multi-tool and three packs of gum.

I have insurance. Sometimes I pay the monthly on it and I think to myself, “What a waste of money!” For many years I paid and got nothing out of it… well, my insurance has 100% break glass coverage, so maybe twice over the years I had my windshield replaced because of a crack caused by road junk. Each time my car was broken into my insurance has paid for it. Each broken window was replaced. Each stereo was upgraded. And when I get around to buying a new tire gauge and multi-tool, they’ll refund me for that too. All in all, as I’ve seen the bills for these pass through my hands, the amounts of damage have been fairly small. Even without insurance I’d have covered it just fine. This time that changed.

I wish I had a picture to show, but the damage to my car looked minor. The door panel around the lock looked bent, and the lock itself wouldn’t turn when the key was put in. However, the lock mechanism worked just fine from the inside, and did in fact lock the door. So when I dropped the car off to have it fixed, covered 100% for vandalism by my insurance, I figured they’d hammer out the door, maybe have to replace the lock cylinder. I was wrong.

In the end, they had to replace the lock (which also involved rekeying the lock to match my key), replace a bunch of stuff inside the door, hammer and repaint the door panel (repainting meant redoing the trim and decals as well), and a handfull of other things. $791. Anyway, I’m glad for my insurance.

There is, however, one thing that my insurance can’t replace, and its something I may never get back. I don’t like driving any more. Driving somewhere means parking, even at my own home (this last break in was literally right outside my front door), and parking means leaving my car unattended, which leads to anxiety upon returning to my car. As I approach my vehicle now I’m looking at the windows for breaks, checking the doors for damage, nervously looking in the window to see if my stereo is still there or if my glovebox has been rifled through. Its been suggested that I get an alarm, but even with the alarm my anxiety wouldn’t go away, it would just be a different anxiety… all the break in stuff plus a new “Is my alarm working?” anxiety. I don’t even want to own a car anymore. And I don’t think this feeling will go away until I catch someone trying to break into my car and I beat them soundly before calling the police.

Or perhaps witness a thief getting caught, because I think part of my issues stems from the lack of concern I get from police. I understand that they hear this stuff alot, and that there is so little evidence and statistically my missing objects will never be recovered, but they always take the report with such indifference, they never collect any evidence, they just fill out the form and leave. They never say if there have been a rash of break ins lately and their working the case or anything like that. In fact, the last two times my car was broken into they didn’t even come, instead just took my information over the phone. The is no compassion, no “bedside manner”. I’ve just bee violated, my car vandalized and items stolen and they don’t say a single thing to possibly help me get beyond it. Facts, forms and forgotten.

I guess, all that I really want, is when it happens, for someone in authority to tell me its going to be all right, even if it isn’t true.

Faster Food

Random Thoughts

I think at the point the thing that angers me the most when I go to eat fast food is the inability of the person at the register to type in exactly what I order. I’ve been eating at Wendy’s restaurants for a long long time, and in that time I have learned their keypad so that I order exactly the way that it must be keyed in. “Junior hamburger with mustard and pickles only.” On the register, all the guy needs to do is hit the junior hamburger button, then the mustard button, then the pickles button and finally the “only” button. Simple. So why do I still get burgers with onions, mayo, ketchup, cheese and/or lettuce on them? I look at the screen and I see that the person working the grill has made my burger to order, the problem being that my order says “Junior cheeseburger with ketchup and onions.”

This is why I get frustrated… I have done everything in my power to eliminate mistakes and yet the people working the register keep messing it up. The other workers to their job correctly, but the person I deal with gets it wrong screwing up the whole chain. Argh!

So, I’m at Wal-Mart and I’m buying two things. Instead of waiting in the ridiculously long lines (because they have three registers open with fifty customers), I head to the self check-out. Beep-beep, scan, beep, bag, scan, beep, bag, credit card, done. And I’m out. This is what fast food places need. Remove the cashiers, they are outdated. Spin the register around, let me punch in my order, swipe my card or insert my bills (provide change if needed) and print me a receipt. Then I proceed to the window and pick up my order when my number is called.

Wendy’s, Burger King, McDonald’s? Any of you guys reading this? As a bonus, it means all the cash is inside the machine in the wall. No more sticky fingers from the employees. No more store hold ups because there is no drawer for them to open. I’m telling you, wave of the future. Wave of the future.

One Day in February

Random Thoughts

On February 27th at 5:30 PM, Jodi and I got married. But it was one heck of a day…

The morning began like any other day… waking up, getting dressed, discovering my car had been broken into. They took my digital tire pressure gauge, a leatherman multi-tool and three packs of gum. They left behind the stereo, the CDs and the $15 in change in the ash tray. However, having somewhere we needed to be, Jodi and I decided we’d report the theft later and for now just empty the car, lock it back up and leave it, seeing as how the thieves were kind enough to not break any windows but just jimmy the lock in such a way as to render it useless on the outside but still operate inside and lock the door just fine.

We loaded up the other car and headed off to some friends’ house, K and P, the ones we’d roped into being our chauffeurs and valets for the day. Once all packed into their car we began the long journey from Atlanta to Savannah.

Upon arriving in Savannah, we were nervous. We needed to check into our hotel early… at noon, but the woman on the phone had said check in was 4pm, 3 at the earliest. Score one for our team as the rooms were ready and we checked in. But another strike for the day, P forgot his suit and has no pants.

Quickly we decide to head to the mall and buy some, he can do without a suit jacket, but he needs pants. Also, Jodi needs a bouquet, so she called up Flowerama (listed in the hotel service guide) and arranges for one over the phone. The shop is on Abercorne which is only a few blocks away. So we pile back into the car and head out. We drive past at least a dozen flower shops and finally reach the mall. We stop, buy P some pants at Macy’s and the girls get their nails done at Le Nails. Back on the road, we keep driving. Finally we find Flowerama. Basically, the farthest point you can get from our hotel while remaining in Savannah, that’s where it is.

Its obvious we are going to be late meeting up with the photographer at 4 PM as planned, so we call and ask to meet at 4:30. She’s fine with it and we get back to the hotel with plenty of time to get ready. While Jodi is putting on makeup, she spills some which I start cleaning up. Crawling around on the floor I didn’t realize that I had gone under the coffee maker drawer and WHAM! I get a nice little red whelt on my head that starts bleeding a little. But fine, we can cover that up or I can just make sure I don’t look down in the photos. Finally I start getting dressed, I open my suit bag and scream something like “Where are my pants?!”

Up until this point, I had totally kept my cool. Now I lost it. I was swearing like a sailor, I wanted to punch and break things, I was going to drive back to Atlanta and kill everyone at the Men’s Warehouse for forgetting to put my pants in with my suit jacket… when I realize… I’m looking at my sport coat. I packed the wrong bag.

I throw my jeans back on and run next door to K and P’s room.

Me: We have a problem. I don’t have my suit.
P: That’s not funny.
Me: I have a sport coat, which is fine, but I don’t have pants.
P: Oh my God, you’re serious?
Me: I’m going to go find pants, Jodi is going to need some help.

And I run to the lobby. I speak with the concieges and explain my predicament. The woman there just goes blank and mutters something about Banana Republic and the Gap. Then the man steps up and tells me to step out the doors, turn left, go down to Broughton, hang a left and a few blocks down will be J. Parker Limited who can hook me up. I run out of the hotel.

At J. Parker Limited I walk in and explain my dilemma. The man there calmly asks, “What color?” I tell him black and he asks, “What size waist?” I answer him and he turns around, flips through the rack he’d been leaning on and pulls out a pair of pants. I try them on. Perfect fit. He marks them, I take them off, and he hands them to the tailor. While we wait we talk about weddings. He thinks we are right in just running off, big weddings are a hassle. He tells me a story of a bride with a $6,000 Irish linen dress whose reception runs out of booze before the wedding party arrives who should have gotten a $500 dress, lied about what it was made of and spent the other $5,500 on more drinks and food. Because honestly, as long as the dress looked good would anyone care that it was Irish linen? As we talked and laughed, my body slackened and I calmed down. Fifteen minutes of waiting at the pants were done. I thanked both him and the tailor and headed back to the hotel.

Everyone else was ready. I got dressed, threw my tie over my shoulder, and we headed to Factor’s Walk, the location our photographer picked for the ceremony. On the way we went over everything. Rings? Check. Checks for the officiant and photographer? Check. Marriage paperwork? … So I sent everyone ahead and ran back to the hotel for the papers.

Finally, I catch back up to the group. We chat a moment and then I inform them that I can’t tie a tie. P makes a valiant effort, but fails. The Reverend Steven P. Schulte steps in and does it up right. I think this is where the laughter started.

We moved out on to the bridge for the ceremony and took a few quick photos. Then the photographer, Nancy Heffernan, moved off to a spot to take shots during the ceremony. Since we had no time to rehearse, Nancy resorted to yelling out instructions as they were needed. “Get closer!” “Back up!” “Not you!” “Move to your left!” “Your other left!” We couldn’t stop laughing.

Reverend Schulte said the words, we exchanged vows, I gave Jodi her ring, she gave me mine… which got stuck halfway over the knuckle. We were going to just force it on when my finger turned purple. Quickly I fought the ring off and left my ring finger red and throbbing. We put the ring on my pinky and vowed to resize it later. We finally managed to stop laughing long enough for Rev Schulte to pronounce us man and wife, and we kissed. We were married.

After the ceremony, we hung around the park at Factor’s Walk for a while taking photos. Then we strolled River Street, getting congratulated by the passerbys and taking more photos until the light faded. We went back to the hotel for Nancy to burn us CDs of all the photos she had taken.

Earlier in the day we had made reservations at Elizabeth on 37th, but now none of us wanted to get in the car and drive somewhere. Nancy suggested Vic’s On the River, which happened to be not fifty feet from where we got married. When Nancy left, we headed out again on foot and went to Vic’s. The atmosphere and the food were excellent, and we sat and ate and chatted over the day’s events and laughed.

I think that if my wedding had been better planned and gone more smoothly, the day would practially fade to nothing in my memories. I’d remember that I got married, and I’d look at the photos and recall some of the day. But the wedding I had… I don’t think I’ll forget a single thing.

A New Project

Random Thoughts

I’ve started up a new project I’m calling “The Game That Never Was”. It is basically just a collection of my thought on what would make the perfect MMORPG. Some of those ideas can be found here on my weblog under the Gaming heading, and I’ll be integrating those into TGTNW eventually. Until then, when I add something new to it, I’ll also include on the index of Probablynot.com a discussion or explanation as to why I came to that idea or decision.

Anyway… enjoy.