34 posts tagged “qotd”

People do many different things to cope with stress, loss, and "bumps in the road". How do you handle stress and hard times? 

Music.  Find an earworm and let it ride.  Presently I am dealing with Janine's return to the States by sticking Alizée's Moi... Lolita on repeat.  Music GO!

In other news, I figured I'd hop back to Vox and see what's up.  The posting UI has changed some, but I can't really point at any one thing and say "that's new".  Oh - there's an "embed" button that I've not seen before.  Neat.

Okay, I'm going to share some photos from the recent past here in Iceland.

Bales of Hay

They wrap them in plastic.  Apparently the hay stays green through the winter that way, giving their livestock nutrients so they don't die from malnutrition.  I wonder how this worked before they had baling machines.  (I can't imagine wrapping these by hand?)

Unknown Village

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This is some village we visited on an adventure while Janine was here.  It was very idyllic.  Quiet, kids playing, some Father at the church standing outside and talking to us.

Icelandic Horses

They're short.  Very short.  Well, their heads were at about chest level for me.  They also apparently have stylish hair.  Awesome.

Cave Wall

The singing cave.  I didn't want to leave.  It's not very big, but quite interesting.  You can see some pretty amazing dates in there - 1700s and 1800s.  Of course, I could go in and carve "1605" on the wall, but I choose to believe that the dates are accurate.

2AM Sunset

What are your plans for the weekend?

This weekend... hum... well, for one I'm messing around with Internet Explorer 7.  It's pretty slick so far.  It's my default browser...for now.  We'll see how it goes.

I'm also currently taking part in a rather large war operation in EVE Online.  My alliance has gone to war.  It's a lot of work (although I haven't been taking part that much), but it's going pretty well.

At some point there are plans to go see a movie with some friends.  Sushi too?

And then theoretically I have a Zul'Gurub raid in World of Warcraft on Sunday.  Not sure if I'm going to go though.  Would rather spend the weekend before I feck off to Iceland doing something with Janine.

That's that.  Time to get back to the war, I think we're about to roll out.

What was your very first job? 

Let's dump my list of jobs, because you might find it interesting...

1. Busboy at the Royal Fork Buffet in Grand Forks, ND.  Later got promoted to a linestocker.  The management was impressed, I was able to recite the training manual nearly word for word.  (I actually took studying it seriously, heh.)
   
2. Sandwich Artist at Subway in Altus, OK.  I spent a year here as the lead closer, working 30-40 hours a week at the age of 16.  It was pretty brutal but I got a lot of money (relatively, I was paid $5.15 and later $5.35 per hour).
3. Computer Guy at the Learning Resources Center (Library) in Altus, OK.  I fixed computers and helped out around the library.  I spent a lot of time playing on Materia Magica (a MUD).  A lot of time.  I memorized an Office '97 license key which I can still mostly remember - MMQGJ-B7HTK-YCV69-9JYVD-WP68B.  (I'm pretty sure a digit or two is transposed at this point 6 years later...)
4. Customer Service Specialist at Amazon.com in Grand Forks, ND.  Was very quickly promoted to Order Specialist (Tier II) and worked the Christmas 2000 season.  I was pretty famous for my insane hours - I think my record was a 90 hour week while maintaining nearly the highest per hour stats in the 20 person team.  Won some prizes once - an original Pets.com puppet thing which I still have in box somewhere.  I then transferred out to Seattle and got laid off.
   
5. Loan Servicing Specialist at Washington Mutual in Seattle, WA.  Same sort of story, did really well, and eventually they got me working on a programming project.  Worked with the Learning and Performance Development group (LaPD heh) on a test creation/delivery/tracking system in Access '97 with a bunch of JavaScript to do the actual test.  (It was awesome, I still have it around somewhere.)  I quit after a year and went to school.
6. Computer Guy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA.  While at school I worked in the tech group and did support.  It paid okay and it gave 10-15 hours a week so it was a great way to just get some income.  Around this time I did some contract work too for a site, that was pretty fun.
7. Sandwich Artist at Subway in Worcester, MA.  This was pretty sad, I was in the dregs of depression, couldn't afford to fly home for Christmas, so I spent it alone at school in a friend's apartment that I borrowed.  My parents mailed me presents.  I was pretty bad off.
8. Software Engineer at Danga Interactive in Beaverton, OR.  You know this part.
9. Software Engineer at Six Apart in San Francisco, CA.  This is where I'm at now.
10. Web Developer at CCP Games in Reykjavik, Iceland.  This is the future, it sounds like.  Just have to make it happen... oh yeah, October 20th is my last day at Six Apart.

I guess this post is as good a time as any for an announcement, huh.  I'll post more later, I have to run for now and get some work done before a meeting later.

I wasn't in time to answer this question.  (Feature request: show old QotDs so I can answer them!)  I'm going to answer it now, at any rate.

1. Altus, OK (born here)
   
2. Wichita Falls, TX
3. San Antonio, TX
4. El Paso, TX
5. Omaha, NE
6. Lillington, NC (summers)
   
7. Grand Forks, ND
8. O'Fallon, IL
9. Scott AFB, IL
10. Scott AFB, IL (changed house)
11. Browns Mills, NJ
12. McGuire AFB, NJ
13. Smithburg, WV
14. Grand Forks, ND
15. Altus, OK
16. Grand Forks, ND
17. Seattle, WA
18. Worcester, MA (dorm)
19. Worcester, MA (sublet)
20. Worcester, MA (dorm house)
21. Beaverton, OR (apt)
22. Beaverton, OR (house)
23. San Francisco, CA (apt)
24. San Francisco, CA (another apt)
25. Fremont, CA (house)

I'm sure that I'm missing something somewhere, but that's what I can think of.  Military brat (Air Force), but also lots of moving on my own.

What are your personal memories of September 11th?

Oh.  You had to ask.

The morning of September 11th I was living north of Seattle and working downtown.  I got out of bed around 6 AM (which is 9 AM east coast) and got on IRC.  People were going crazy - it was impossible to figure out what was going on.  I thought it was a joke.  Turns out it wasn't.

I decided to go to work - people told me not to.  (I worked downtown amid all the skyscrapers.)  They said to call in sick or something.  Whatever - I decided to go in.  I usually took the bus in to work, but had to drive to the Park and Ride.  On the way over, I listened to the radio.

The news was talking about car bombs and said one had exploded on Capitol Hill.  They were talking about Washington DC but I thought they were talking about the one in Seattle - I was at that minute turning into a parking spot and ended up hitting another vehicle.  Left a note with my number and went to work.

Everybody who called in was talking about the tragedy.  We had a radio on all day.  We didn't really know what to think or do.  I had one person break down crying on the phone because one of her friends was on one of the planes.  It touched so many people.

Janine was upset about it too.  Her brother lived (and still does) in Manhattan.  She had a bunch of friends that lived up there too.  Turns out none of them were near that part of the city, but it wouldn't have taken too much bad luck to end up there for a meeting or something.

Overall, I remember the day being just -- shocking.  I guess that's the best word for it.  How could someone do this to us?  Who did it?  They need to pay - someone needs to pay.  I felt anger, I wanted to join up with the military and go punch someone in the nuts.

I remember the outpouring of hatred against people of Arab descent (or whatever the PC term is).  I remember wanting to kill those people who dared call themselves Americans and then beat and hurt somebody simply for the color of their skin.

I flew a month later into Newark.  I remember the guards with guns, walking around, keeping a watchful eye on things.  I didn't envy their jobs, but wished them luck.

I guess in the end it didn't really accomplish much.

What's the nerdiest thing about you?

Heh.  Do I even have to answer this?  Come on, who posts about an MMORPG, has a TCG set at his desk, and thinks the best kind of weekend involves a bunch of friends, tons of Mountain Dew, and Diablo II on Nightmare.

Srsly.

When was the last time you had to speak in front of a group?  How did you feel?

Last time I spoke in front of a reasonably sized group was here in the office, giving my presentation about EVE Online.  I actually had it all planned out, had some co-demonstrators, and things were off to a great start.  Then the server crashed.

Becuse the server had issues, I got flustered and started trying to wait for it to come back, thinking it'd be a momentary disturbance.  Unfortunately it wasn't.  I think the presentation went okay, but I was too flustered and didn't do the things I had planned.  (My awesome ending movie wasn't shown, because I forgot.)

Anyway, in general I love speaking to groups.  I am certainly not afraid of public speaking, even if I'm afraid of strange random groups of people.

How well do you know your next-door neighbors?

Depends on how you define "next door".  If you mean online, then I know them relatively well... oh wait, you mean in real life?  Oh, geeze...

I don't know them at all.  I don't even know their names.  I do know that on weekends, they bust out the mariachi music and stand around their trucks wearing cowboy hats.  I also know that they like to ride through our yard on bicycles.  And some of them like to throw things at my car.

This is probably why I don't like my neighbors very much.  I don't think any of them play EVE or WoW or even use computers very often.  There's probably not much we'd have in common, even if we did talk.

But really, I am just not the kind of person who will try to meet people.  I'll say hi if someone is around, but I don't really care much about it.  It's just my thing, y'know?  Some of you probably understand that, some of you probably don't.

C'est la vie.

What's your morning beverage of choice?  Coffee, tea, juice?  Homemade or store-bought?

I don't generally drink anything in the morning.  I sometimes have a bowl of cereal.  And sometimes we stop at Jack in the Box and will pick up breakfast, which results in me drinking some Coke.

If I had to pick something, though, I'd make my favorite caffeinated drink ever - a Vietnamese Iced Coffee.  (I've heard it called Thai Iced Coffee, as well.)  Anyway, the idea is that you make some espresso (I usually do 2 shots, 4 if I need to stay up really late) and then mix it with some sweetened condensed milk (usually 40-60% of the milk as the espresso).  Then pour over ice.

It's possibly the worst thing for you - tons of sugar, tons of caffeine - but if you need to wake up, it's a damn good way to do it.

P.S., congrats to the Vox team on r10.  It looks great - I've changed my blog style again.  Hehe.

When you were younger, were there any game shows that you religiously watched and wanted to be a contestant on?

I was a fan of many Nickolodeon shows.  I always wanted to be on that show that involved bringing out the entire family and pitting them against another through all sorts of crazy obstacle courses.  I forget the name of it though.  I also liked the one show that involved dropping buckets of slime on people, but I've likewise forgotten the name.

And now, moving on past the QotD...

I'm very sad by software that underperforms.  For example, I just had to restart both Firefox and XMMS.  The former was taking up 400MB of RAM, the latter 500MB.

Okay, in what universe should these programs be doing this?  My machine's RAM and swap were both nearly full!  It's not like I was abusing the programs, either.  I run zero Firefox extensions, and XMMS was simply playing a web stream.

Sigh.