Straight Edge Life

“while it may be faster than dlt tapes, ‘re-typing’ is not a valid recovery strategy.”
— Post on Slashdot.org

Good God, I hope this is worth it. The fine fellow who hooked me up with this current project thinks we’ll make a killing licensing it to other clients. Man I hope so because I seriously underbid the project. I’m a good 40 hours over my bid and still have the entire beta process to complete. No wonder I got the job, right? Anyways…

I’ve been thinking (as always) about finding work overseas for a couple of years. I’d like to get really good in a language and it would be an adventure to live in a different country. Really, there’s not much holding me here in the US besides friends and family. Bust most of them are already spread out across the country as it is. I’ll actually be just about as close in London as I am in Oregon to many of my friends in the US. And closer to my friends in Europe. Not sure I’d want to live in London, but you know what I mean. And if we don’t get a Democrat in the White House in this election, I’m likely to leave with or without work. For that matter, my dad will probably come with me. Republicans owning the senate, congress and presidency. Armageddon!

I had better get back to writing this reporting system. This stuff is fun. I love writing reporting systems. It makes all the friggin’ data I’ve been fixing useful again. More later, probably.

Damn I love Eugene in the summer. When 30,000 students vanish basically overnight it’s like you have the city to yourself. And Eugene is a great place to have to yourself. It is, in fact, one of the primary reasons why I still live here. You can go anywhere and do anything without any crowds or waiting in line. It is fabulous I’m telling you. Wonderful. Even the state parks clear out. Once spring break has run it’s course places like Smith Rock are nearly empty. Again, wonderful.

I have a lot to be happy about right now. The next month is going to be pretty busy with work. I’ve got probably more than I can handle in terms of work, and this is just fine with me. Why? Because when I’m done with the work I’m going on a trip. I’m not going to say where until I’ve actually got my ticket in hand (bad luck to talk about trips before they’re a sure thing). But I’ll tell you it’s not to any destination in this country. And, by the time that trip is over all the U of O students will be finishing up their finals and getting out of town. Eugene will be mine again. Lazy summer afternoons, late sunsets, and lots of trips into the hills to enjoy the sun and gifts of nature. The next three months should be a blast.

Ever listened to the show “Coast To Coast AM”? I’ve been burning the midnight oil lately, cranking through to complete an overdue project and this show has been keeping me company for the last few nights. It’s a trip. It’s sort of like x-files, only the late-night am radio version without Mulder and Scully. People call in and talk about their crazy experiences with aliens and the host has psychic guests and all sorts of experts of great acclaim in the world of the abnormal. It’s the kind of show that will get you through an entire night of driving across a lonely desert.

Yeah, anyways. I’m finally finishing up this project for the local school district. And by “finish up” I mean bring it to beta, where it can be slaughtered alive and rebuilt at the request of the serveral hundred users who will rely on it to complete their daily work. Freaks me out a bit. This is the highest user load system I’ve ever built. Sure, I’ve built systems that handle more overall load on the server, bigger databases, and far larger bandwidth demands. But this thing is likely to be pretty transaction heavy, and that’s a slightly different ballpark. One in which my skills have yet to be tested. But this is the typical life of a programmer, learn as you go, baptism by fire, etc.

I feel sorta crappy right now though because I haven’t been spending any time with anyone for two weeks or so. The other night, when I actually managed to meet my girl for a plate of Kung Pao chicken at Maple Garden on campus, I realized that I’ve truly been working way too hard. She said she missed me and I realized that I hadn’t missed her. I hadn’t because it felt like I saw her just a day earlier, when in fact it had been more than a week ago, and only for a few moments at that. When on deadline, time passes way too quickly. And of course I made the mistake of saying that I didn’t miss her, and had to try and explain the whole time warp after the fact, failed miserably, and probably left her feeling like I just don’t give a crap. How much does that suck?

Lesson learned? When extremely tired, overworked, and mentally exhausted, don’t say ANYTHING unless you say it in your head at least three times to check and make sure it doesn’t make you look like a complete ass.

And woah, it’s Spring. I just looked outside my window and realized that it’s nearly 6 PM and it’s still light outside. God how I love Spring and Summer.

So I decided completely against taking Straight-Edge-Life offline. I’ll be giving it a major facelift in a few weeks, and will be adding a section on Travel (because I plan to travel soon, and often) and I’m giving the administration area a complete rebuild to make it easier for me to maintain the site.

I would sort of rather be outside, playing. But this site is actually pretty damn important to me. I enjoy contributing to it and I enjoy the feedback I get. Yeah hey. More later, back to work for me, for now.

I can barely sit still for five minutes. I have no idea how I’m going to make it until vacation in May. No idea at all. I’m pretty much fed up with programming right now too. I can feel myself burning out on it. I need to be careful or I might burn out on it permanently. I found myself considering learning another few languages this week, just to keep myself challenged. A scary thought. Grrr. This is going to be a hard week. I’ve got a deadline I can’t miss and… well it’s tough. All I want to do is go play outside. The weather is fantastic. I have to program at night to keep myself from going bonkers. And that strategy is barely working. Barely.

Here it is again. That nearly overwhelming urge to go. To escape. To, in effect, vanish. But this time I can’t figure out whether it’s something wrong or something right that’s bringing it on. I’m most certainly sick of a lot of things. Sick of dealing with them, sick of watching them around me. Sick of being aware. But this is nothing new. My relationship with the world is always as Robert Frost called it, “a lover’s quarrel”. I love it and can’t stand it at the same time. But I do wonder pretty seriously about this need to escape. Maybe so long as I do it without screwing up my body by doing drugs, it’s ok. Maybe. But shit. I don’t know. It seems a strange line to draw. There are many kinds of death. I can sit and let the stress build up slowly over time, not ever taking my escapes, and eventually be killed by it. I can do drugs and speed up the process a bit. Or I can do something that seems to help provide a solution, climb, bike, hike, shoot photos, and risk dying very quickly in an accident. Yeah, I know shooting photos isn’t especially dangerous, but you know what I’m talking about. Either way, it’s all an escape. And who am I to judge what other people do with their lives and bodies as an escape.

Bottom line is that it feels like shit to judge other people. Being “straight edge” carries some responsibility. If you are going to go to the trouble of calling yourself straight-edge you should damn well know what it means and follow through with it. But even as a man who believes in keeping his body clean, I don’t feel it allows me to right to judge other’s or to forcibly apply my beliefs on other’s actions. I certainly wish to protect the right to exercise a clean straight edge life. Hell yes… And I know damn well, being straight edge, that this world might well genuinely fall apart without some general sort of rule of law and order… but then it seems to fall apart just as quickly with too much law and order. Which brings me to my final rambling question of the evening… Do you ever wonder if ignorant people are genuinely more happy than those of us who pay attention?

There is hardly time in the day to think about all of these things. Sometimes I just want to live my life. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming responsibility to try and make things better. But who is to say that my view of things would be better? Damn. I’ve worked myself into a corner again. As usual.

This was a great movie. Why beat around the bush. One of my favorites. And hard to compare with anything else I’ve sen this year. You might compare the overall tone of it to Mystic River, but these are two very different movies. For one, Ben Kingsley is fantastic. He delivers an astonishing portrayal of weakness and strength inseparably tangled. His character reminds me of a shakespearean tragedy, a one man train of pride heading for inevitable disaster. With this kind of movie you don’t question whether or not he will make it out alright, he won’t. The pleasure of this movie is being so moved by the strength of Kinglsey’s character that you only question how many he will bring down with him as he falls. You only care about those he touches, and you feel sorry for the man himself. Kingsley carries this movie. His character is so well developed, and his story is so strong and well delivered. It’s just awesome.

Jennifer Connely and Shohreh Aghdashloo are excellent as well. The entire cast is quite strong actually. I highly recommend seeing House of Sand and Fog.

I give this film a solid 10 out of 10. An amazing true story about two climbers in the Andes who face disaster while descending from their first ascent of Siula Grande.

If you have read the book, go simply to associate Joe’s face and voice with the story itself… To see the mountain itself in all it’s awesome size. The book is wonderful on it’s own but it’s nice to get a solid dose of color and elaboration that isn’t in the book. And if you haven’t read the book, welcome to the world of Alpine Mountaineering, where the incredible lust for life can take you to the most difficult peaks and leave you there for dead after your partner cuts your rope to save his own.

Dawn of the Dead bites. No pun intended.

Cannibals, what a pain. I mean, what a horrible way to start the day… being bitten by an undead cannibal. And to make matters worse, after being bitten you die, then you become one of the undead yourself and go on to bite other people and turn them into undead cannibals. Like a virus, movies with this exact same zombie plot spread all over the movie scene, boring the hell out of audiences everywhere. Dawn of the Dead falls effortlessly into this niche of cliche horror films, adding little or nothing to the overall diversity of the horror genre.

What surprises me the most about this phenomenon is that bigger and bigger name actors are starting to take rolls in formulaic horror movies. Ving Rhames and Mekhi Phifer are only two of many name-brand actors who’ve opted to take this road. And what surprises me second most about this film is that the entire formula seems to work. I went to the opening show of Dawn of the Dead today. It was packed. People seemed to love it. Possibly their expectations weren’t very high. Possibly they have an extremely short memory for nearly identical films like 28 Days Later which came out only months ago. I have no idea.

The popular vote for this movie will likely be around 5 out of 10. My vote is a mere 3 out of 10 as it lacked originality, cohesive plot, interesting characters (although the acting wasn’t too bad), or especially compelling editing or photography. It was paced quickly enough to keep me sorta interested. But that’s like saying the paint on a Ford Pinto is nice. It doesn’t make you want to have it. Don’t bother with Dawn Of The Dead. It’s pretty boring. Nothing you haven’t seen before.