Normally, I come to work and bust ass all day long. Seriously, I work pretty hard all day to make sure I get my work done and don’t have to stay late. Its not easy keeping my nose to the grindstone and meeting milestone after milestone.
Today, though I can’t bring myself to do a damn thing.
My big goal for today is to find a box in which to put my stuff. I have a 3:30pm appointment with HR for my exit interview and I need to find something to do with the rest of my day.
I’m thinking of purchasing a video camera, as a going away present for myself. I’ve been wanting a new one for a while and this would be a good excuse. I was even thinking that I should go out at lunch time and buy it and then use the rest of the afternoon to get to know it.
I know, I’m a terrible slacker. I just can’t get my head in the game today, you know?
Sphere: Related ContentThis is an email I got from someone today. Ever since my resignation was announced I’ve been getting three or four of these every day:
From: Deborah D.
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 10:15 AM
Subject: Best Wishes!Dear Rob:
I want to thank you for helping Roger and I out when we first ventured into the world of SAP and Impromptu. You brought sense to the madness and were very gracious with your time!
I am sorry that we are losing you, but I wish you well in your future adventures!
Take care,
Debbie
I love getting these! And there are, like, 30 people coming to my goodbye lunch today! It really makes me feel good to know that so many people feel this way. Its easy to go along, day after day, not getting much feedback and believe that what you’re doing doesn’t make a difference. I mean, for all the different ways I try to do a good job I often don’t hear back that it matters. And I have to confess that it isn’t easy. It would be easier to be a little bitter and tell people to screw off when they’re asking too much or when they’re bothering me. But I’m coming to believe that people really do appreciate the effort I go to try and do a good job. By that I don’t just mean getting the work done, but being considerate of peoples’ feelings and trying to work with them to accomplish our goals in a cooperative manner. I’ve tried being more or less forceful and I think I’m at a good place now in how I work with others.
So things like this email and the high turn out for this lunch are meaningful to me.
Sphere: Related ContentIn order to be an assistant soccer coach, I had to fill out a CORI form — I guess its an I’m-not-a-convict-form.
They ask for your name and driver’s license number and your address… and your previous address.
They also ask for your maiden name or alias.
For alias, I put down Tater Salad.
Sphere: Related ContentSo I was listening to the podcast for Lost. I don’t have a link, but found it through iTunes and ABC probably has a link to it as well. The first half of the podcast is always inane interviews with the actors. I can’t get interested in it, really.
But the second part always has the producers talking about the twists of the show and their plans for it, either in the future or past tense. So I like that part of it.
In this week’s podcast someone wrote in wondering why http://www.thehansofoundation.org was down. The producers went with and had a fine old time with it. But I had never heard of The Hanso Foundation on the show. Hmmm… ok, now I understand where it came from. Believe it or not, there’s a wikipedia entry for it. I went and looked it up and now it makes sense. They’re the ones who funded The Dahrma Initiative.
Anyway, I put in a slightly different URL http://hansofoundation.org and wound up a the ABC forums for Lost. Which is fine and not really interesting all by itself. I perused some entries. And then I noticed that my URL had changed to: http://www.4815162342.com
Those are those crazy numbers that were printed on the hatch and that won Hurley his millions. Curious, I delved deeper!
Someone mentioned a website called http://www.dharmainitiative.com/. I went there and it looked like kind of an interested dead-end — a one-page website put there as kind of a cool add-on to the show to make it look real. There are clues to the nature of The Dahrma Initiative in the images that rotate in the center of the octogon. I thought that was kind of neat.
BUT, the text was so small I pressed CTRL-A to highlight everything. I find that often makes small text more legible. But when I did that it highlighted some text above the red box. The text was:
“hEv az andAslUt iftlEplezlais kek anpAtpyaup, ek iftEgtOg adpad astlaup”
“Hmm… this looks just like gibberish!” says I.
I copied it and went to http://www.rot13.com. Rot13 used to be a common encryption algorithm that shifts all the letters in the alphabet 13 characters. I put this in there and got…
More gibberish.
Being a basically lazy person, I went to google and found only one page with all of this text on it.
It explained that there was an “a priori” language invented by a guy named Charles Elam. They said “It looks like an explosion in a typesetting shop: upper and lower case vowel letters represent different sounds, and ‘Q’ is a vowel.” That mess of gibberish was an example of his language called Oz.
hEv az andAslUt iftlEplezlais kek anpAtpyaup, ek iftEgtOg adpad astlaup.
Because the wicked do not recieve their just deserts immediately,
they grow bold in transgression.
So this quote is posted over the symbol for the Dharma Initiative.
What’s the point of all this? The producers also said that during the summer, when there are no new episodes, their medium will shift to the web where more stories will be told.
Now I want to follow this trail of breadcrumbs and see where they lead.
Who’s with me?
The next step is to track down the meaning of the hieroglyphics. I also noted, that someone has to press that button ever 108 minutes. This is the square of 9. What does 9 have to do with anything?
Dunno.
Sphere: Related ContentAt work we’ve been using “instant messaging” tools for the last couple of years. Mostly I think they’re a distraction. But I’ve used them with good success in communicating with our remote sites, especially the ones in Mexico. Some of my colleagues’ spoken english wasn’t as good as their written english, so it made it much easier to communicate with them.
We recently upgraded to MS Communicator. It doesn’t “wow” me or anything, but it lets you add a comment next to your name; I guess so you can announce that you’re not there or something.
Mine says “So long and thanks for all the fish”
I’ve been wondering how many of my colleagues will understand the reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and how many will just think I’m a nut.
Sphere: Related ContentWork continues to be good. I’m cleaning up the last dribs and drabs of work. I packed up about half of my cubicle today and felt great about it.
This afternoon I have to get home in time to take the kids to soccer practice. I’ll be pretending to be assistant coach this year. I know the actual coach. But I’m not sure if the soccer organizers have me listed as the asst. coach. I had signed up to be an asst. coach but never heard another word about it. Maybe the actual coach will want a hand and maybe he won’t.
So practice is at 5pm.
I’ll let you know how it went.
Sphere: Related ContentWhat’s “An Invitation to Murder”?
You could check out their web site at http://www.invitationtomurder.com/index.htm. Basically its the idea of a dinner theater murder mystery party, but its in your house. We had a great time with it
But I thought I would include some pictures from that night:
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This is my last week at my current employer. I’ve been there for ten years and am really looking forward to this new change. But its going to be hard to leave behind my friends and my comfort to take on this new and more risky endeavor.
I saw in the news that the stock price of my new employer sank by 28% in one day because some clinical trials indicated that the dosage of their drug needed to be lowered. To me this seemed like a very small thing, but I guess the analysts know a lot more about this stuff than I do.
Right now they’re focusing on some drugs to treat hepatitis B and C, but they’ll eventually be selling a drug to treat HIV as well.
Then I read this headline:
Gilead AIDS Drugs Show Prevention Promise
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
ATLANTA - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases jolted the world, scientists think they soon may have a pill that people could take to keep from getting the virus that causes the global killer.
[...]
Now don’t get me wrong, I want a cure as quickly as anyone else, but all this news has introduced more doubt about my new employer’s stability. Its a little unnerving. Nonetheless, I feel confident that if something did go wrong I have skills that would put me in high demand in a lot of places. Additionally, I suspect my current employer would also welcome me back.
So I think I’ll be fine no matter how this shakes out. But this is a move I need to make for my own sanity.
I’ll let you know how the sanity-thing turns out.
Sphere: Related ContentSo, how did the weekend go? Mostly great!
On Saturday morning I finally got to get rid of all the paper recyclables that have been getting stored there. It seems the Melrose school system is having a competition between the elementary schools to see who can recycle the most paper, on a per kid basis. But they messed up the scheduling of it and I’ve been storing all my newspapers, cardboard and wrapping paper in my storeroom since November of 2005! I took two mammoth loads over to the school bright and early and felt greatly relieved to have all that crap out of my store room.
Later, I sent Liz out of the house with some money and told her not to come back until 4pm. I took the kids over to a friend of the family’s house where they got to spend the rest of the afternoon playing with their kids.
I went to the bakery and picked up a whole bunch of the most beautiful desserts I could find. They were really lovely. I also got four bags of ice at the convenience store.
Then I went home and met the maids who spent the next hour and a half cleaning the house. Also, Liz’s new clothes washer arrived. Those guys from sears were really fast! Inside of ten minutes they delivered the new washer, installed it, tested it and removed the old wasaher! wow.
I spent the next couple of hours getting the house ready for Liz’s eighth anual 29th birthday party. I pushed the dining room table against one wall and set up extra chairs and pulled superflous furniture out of the living room. I was really busy setting up.
Liz came back at 4pm. We talked a little about the upcoming party and I sent her off to go have a bath and get dressed. She had a nice time while she was out and I gather she had a very relaxing time in the tub. At 5:30pm Parris and her boyfriend came by to decorate the place. And that really helped a lot. There were balloons and streamers and all kinds of stuff. And it was those decorations that turned the event from just-a-bunch-of-people-sitting-around-drinking to a birthday party!
At six o’clock the caterers showed up. They brought artichoke crustini (that I had them make special for the event) and crudite, and stuffed mushroom caps, and terriyaki chicken and all kinds of stuff. We had some great food. Finally the actors from “Invitation to Murder” showed up and retired to their “green room” — it was just our basement but it gave them some privacy.
After the guests arrived the show got underway around 7pm. We had a really good time and the actors were really a lot of fun. They were very engaging and everyone played along really well. The beer and spiced rum flowed liberally and the food was devoured. For the next two hours we played along and danced and sang “happy birthday” and it was a really great time.
They left around 9pm. Most other people stayed around for a couple of more hours. One couple even decided to stay the night!
Liz had a great time. The kids had a great time.
The only downside was one person was kind of a belligerent drunk and needed some finessing to calm down and refocus. Liz was awesome at that. And incidentally she was hilarious. She made clever jokes easily and carried herself with a lot of charisma and grace. She was in top form. Also we got word that night that Liz’s father went in to the hospital for some heart related problems. Liz was worried about him and I’m afraid it dampened the party somewhat.
The following day was rough, though. I couldn’t go back to sleep after I woke up at 5:30am. I felt sick to my stomach and had a throbbing head ache. When I saw the wreckage that the party had left behind I knew I couldn’t let anyone else see it. There were all kinds of liquor bottles and beer bottles and mixers on the counter. There were spills and food to get cleaned up. So for the next couple of hours I kind of puttered through it. I confess I didn’t clean it up with any kind of haste. Nonetheless, by the time everyone else got up the party was all cleaned up and they could look at the kitchen without being remidned of the previous night.
Sunday we spent recuperating. That’s all. We did nothing interesting becuase we were too wiped out.
Good party.
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