Sundial

I just moved into an office after more than 3 years in a windowless cubicle. New office has a window and an angled view of the Capitol Building, which is pretty cool. What's especially neat is knowing the weather and time of day without using my computer. This south-facing office gets lots of light from the mysterious yellow ball in the sky throughout the day, so I decided to build a sundial one day. For some reason, I half-expected it not to work. It does. Minor triumphs like this make life worth living; well, that and buffalo wings.

This means it's almost 2:30, which it was. Rock.

Oh, email.

I left for Orange County on Friday for a business trip and returned last night. As of Sunday afternoon I had about 9 new emails. When I checked my email this morning I had 54 new messages. Oh, the horror.

busy week = mind melt

As the title implies, I've been pretty busy at work. My work isn't interesting to read about---or anyone's work for that matter, unless you're Batman---so i'll spare you...for now. Random thought, but what in the hell ever happened to Pacey from Dawson's Creek? I'm not sure what his name was (past tense is indeed appropriate here), but the last movie I remember him being in was The Skulls, which I think came out in 2001. I wonder what's worse, being a jobless Dawson graduate (Pacey) or being a jobless Dawson graduate AND having your career driven into a ravine and being impregnated by a inculcating madman (Holmes). I guess I answered my own question. If you can't tell from the sharp rise in multisyllabic words I've been using lately, I've been studying for the GRE and putting a lot of time (read: 2 hours per week) in what I call WordBlasting. WordBlasting is where you take a list of several hundred words, intravenously-introduced Peruvian blue cocaine, 7 minutes, and a cool, damp cloth. It works wonders, believe me. I'm planning on asking for my $565 back from the USDA Grad School where I took test prep classes recently. The only problem is that I tend to pass out for about 6 hours after WordBlasting, but when I wake up, boy do I know my vocabulary. Sure, I'm usually bleeding from one ear and have a mysterious amount of change in my pockets when I come around, but it's imperative that I improve my GRE English score. I mean, it's not just because I need to do well on the GRE, who doesn't need to know words like "prolix" and "interregnum?" I can't tell you how many times Tony Cornheiser has described The USC Trojans' uniforms as "incarnadine," and Anderson Cooper has referred to Iran's nuclear program as "sub rosa." MathBlasting is a little different because it tends to involve things like the quadratic formula and the rhombus. These godless machinations require artful square root signs and articulated spatial relations skills, so I have to make sure my head's a little clearer. Nothing's worse than dropping blotter acid while MathBlasting and winding up with two parallel lines shooting straight out of my chest. Want to know the 12th power of 2? It's 4,096. What about the hypotenuse of a triangle whose legs are 9 and 40? It's 41. Do you know how I know that? Because I have to for the GRE, and because I get emails all the time from ETCW! fans demanding that I make simple calculations in my head for them. I don't get it either, but that's how useful all of this is in real life. No matter how much drugs I do, nothing can prepare me for the two essay questions, one of which fools me every time with deceptively cogent logic like, "Garyville is a small town with a big factory. Because it has a big factory, it absolutely must have a man who owns a saddle. Unicorns don't allow men with saddles to ride them, so it is unquestionable that no unicorns own more than 1 acre of property in Chuckton, the town 10 miles down the road from Garyville." Honestly, for the life of me, I just am unable to identify the logical flaws in that argument. By the way, have you ever wondered what would happen if you secretly walked up behind someone at their computer in your office and blew an airhorn? Or threw a brick at their head? That would make for some good, incarcerative YouTube. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that someone keeps stealing my staple remover? I'd staple it down to my desk, but then how would I get it off? I bet Confucius wondered the same thing at some point. Actually, I bet he didn't, not because there was no such thing as a staple remover back then, but because I'm way smarter than he will ever be. "Man with hand in pocket not always playing with coin." What the fuck Confucius? You fucking pervert. I'd better lock up my daughters around you. Wait, maybe this has something to do with why I always end up with coins in my pocket when WordBlasting... uh-oh.

Oh, that's right, I printed something one second ago!

I am now 100% absolutely goddamn sure I just printed something.

You know... I'm not really sure how to begin, but I'll preface by saying that sometimes technology rubs me the wrong way. Not in a suicidal Radiohead-OK Computer kind of way, but maybe more in a Rage Against the Machine way.

For instance, those water-saving smart toilets that supposedly know when to flush are truly a fantastic accomplishment of human ingenuity. They sense when you're done doing your thing and then do you the courtesy of sucking down your poo without you needing to touch anything. That is except that they tend to flush 4-5 times even if you're in there for only 20 seconds just to adjust your shirt tuck. How "smart".

Computers are particularly frustrating. Microsoft Windows is especially good at pushing those tiny buttons in my brain that make me pound the table and mutter things like "Holy shit I swear to motherfucking Christ fuck I'm gonna fucking kill something this is fucking ridiculous oh my god i fucking hate this piece of shit you asshole bastard fuck fuck FUCK (with table pound and continued muttering)."

That friendly, bug-eyed Paperclip that pops up every time you do anything in Word is also a fun one. I almost feel bad for it, it just wants to help, but Microsoft just made him fucking annoying. It's like that pudgy kid in middle school who was reeeeally friendly but also reeeeally dorky, dorkier than you (me) even, and so you always blew him off just in case any of the cool kids might catch you being seen with him. That kid was the Paperclip. Shit, that kid probably created the Paperclip.


Worse than poorly programmed human-computer interface psychology experiments like the Paperclip are the little itty-bitty things that just make your life slightly more difficult. For instance, take the following scenario:

1) I'm working on a document, "List of Hot Men.doc", and want to print it.
2) I click the printer icon to print the document.
3) The printer right-fucking-next-to-me starts printing "List of Hot Men.doc".
4) After it's done printing, up pops a little balloon in the bottom-right of the Desktop telling me extremely useful information such as:

• "This document has been sent to the printer"
• "Document name: 'S:\trkn.xerxes.smi.\230GH-I70\Proje..."
• "Printer name: \\PS09\M913-LJ43KT"

Okay. That's all completely necessary information. What is it I'm supposed to do now, thank the computer? It sure seems like it, because that helpful little balloon won't ever, ever, ever go away until you hit the tiny little "x" to close it. If DC was ever attacked with nerve gas on like a Wednesday morning, the Feds would need to put together a special task force just to go floor-to-floor throughout the city in order to close these balloons.

Microsoft: please, please, please stop doing these things. Please.

So...what's new in my life?

It's been over a week since I posted something, and that's probably because life's been a bit hectic lately. Let's see why it has been:

1) Big meeting next week that still isn't fully planned
2) Weekend away in the hills
3) Caught the plague from Bon-Journey
4) Planning a business trip to Spain
5) Got engaged

More on these, and other far more important topics, soon.

Pop Quiz #2

A couple months ago I put up a pop quiz that was sorta about work, and inspiration struck me on a 40-minute Metro ride back from Silver Spring to do another. So here's another:

1. You're at a full-day meeting in-town but out of the office on Tuesday; everyone expects you not to come back until tomorrow. The meeting, miraculously (and unrealistically) ends at noon instead. What do you do?

a) Put a call into the office to tell your staff that you're on your way back in and look forward to the unexpected chance to get some work done today.
b) Grab a nice, long lunch and slowly meander your way back to work.
c) Blow off work for the rest of the day since nobody's expecting you and go home and relax.
d) Take the rest of the month off.

The answer depends on who you're talking to when you tell the story. If you're talking to your boss' boss, it's a). If you're talking with your boss, it's b). If you're with your co-workers, it's c), and if you're talking open-endedly in an electronic public forum to a bunch of friends it's d).


2. That really annoying but really friendly guy down the hall has taken yet another 20 minutes of your valuable web-surfing time away from you with his pointless banter. How do you refer to him behind his back?

a) a "maybe-too-friendly" guy
b) a weener
c) a weirdo
d) a freak
e) a fucking dick-sucking douchebag motherfucker

The answer depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to your boss' boss, it's a). If you're talking to the hot blond with the sweet rack, it's b) (chicks love dorky 80's throwback colloquialisms). If you're with your boss, it's c). If you're with your co-workers, it's d), and if you're drunk in a bar bathroom muttering to yourself as you piss all over the seat it's e).


3. If you had your choice, which Nintendo (NES) villain would you like to see go on a rampage through your building?

a) the Hammer Bros. from Super Mario Brothers
b) King Hippo from Mike Tyson's Punchout!
c) The Amazon from Pro Wrestling
d) Death himself from Paperboy
e) Metal Man from Megaman 2
f) Giant Gay Free-style-walking Alien Mutant Boy from Contra

The obvious answer might be f) for comedic value alone, but don't underestimate the carnage a pair of armored, vulturine turtles can muster when they start lobbing hundreds of hammers through the air in a confined space.


4. When sitting in a 1.5-hour meeting beginning at 8:30am on Monday, what unrelated topic will your mind wander to first?

a) the chick on the Metro with the sweet rack
b) the boiling revenge you desire to be visited upon the enormously obese woman on the Metro who squeezed you out of the spot from which you could see the chick with the sweet rack
c) if any bagels will be left in the cafeteria by the time the meeting ends
d) trying to remember what you did last weekend, even though it ended only 12 hours earlier
e) wondering why you wore brown socks with black pants, then mentally dropping it, but then readdressing it 5 seconds later when you notice it again

You'll inevitably thoroughly cover all of these topics within the span of about 20 seconds, leaving you with nothing to think about but how bored you are for the following hour and a half. So there's no real answer to this, just pain and suffering.


5. Somebody you barely know tries to start a conversation with you at about 100 decibels in an elevator with 6 other people in it. How do you respond to their declarative/interrogative/imperative/exclamatory remark/question/suggestion/observation?

a) "Uh-huh."
b) "Oh yeah?"
c) "Mmm."
d) "Huh."
e) "Heh."
f) [faint nod]
g) [deafening silence]

All the ground rules of common etiquette and interpersonal interaction are thrown out the window upon entering an elevator, it's like sitting in a shiny coat closet with 8 strangers for 30 seconds. With that in mind, the nature, subject matter, and tone of the person's statement is completely immaterial, so you can get by with any of these answers as long as you make no eye contact whatsoever and just keep staring infatuatedly at the numbers counting the floors you pass. Though personally, in a crowded elevator, I prefer the most nonverbal affirmation of existence possible so as not to imply amicability or even familiarity (nor encouragement) with the loser who's trying to start a 15-second conversation because he wonders how what you think of the difference between the first and last two weeks of April's weather compares to his/her own judgment of it. Answer g) is by far preferable if you can realistically pretend the person never even walked onto the elevator, but f) is usually the safer option.

(ABOVE) "At Cass Screw Machine Products, You're One In A Million!"

Let's get physical

No matter what you think I mean by the title, it should annoy you.

For the first time since I was 12, I used my bike to get somewhere I needed to go to. Okay, that's not quite true. I used it Freshman year at Michigan to get to crew practice a couple times, but it's fun to think about being 12, and it's quite depressing to think about being a Freshman in college.

Today I rode my bike to work. I went from Dupont across Q St and took a right on 7th, down to K St, then over to and down 6th to where I work---about 2 miles. I was planning on leaving at 7:45am because I wasn't sure how long it'd take. Of course, I woke up late and left at 8:00am instead.

It only took me 15 minutes. That's faster than taking the Metro and even faster than driving, I was pretty surprised. Of course, the way back is going to take twice as long because it's uphill, but there's no rush going home.

Not sure why I decided to try this, or while I feel good about it. I certainly don't want to become one of those annoying bikers who complains about how few bike racks there are in this city or how everyone should bike to work to save the environment.

So, I'll leave it at this: let's get physical.

My awful, awful jobs, Part 1

Last night I was out at a bar posing as a Law School grad so I could get free food and beer---which, incidentally, does not come close to the subterfuge at hand when my British alter-ego, Simon, makes a late-night appearance---where I started talking to some girl, which eventually led me to bring up this really awful job I had. I'm not sure why my friends think it's so funny to walk up to people on the street to sell them hair salon packages, but my last post made me realize how many bad jobs I've had over the years.

I'm going to start this as a list of bad jobs but I'm pretty sure it'll just end up being stories from not-so-bad jobs since they're funny. Maybe I'll make another post for them, maybe not, but I'm sure as hell not going to go back and restructure everything for your convenience. Onward, in chronological order!

1. Gibby's Seafood Restaurant. I worked as a busboy for one summer at this popular, somewhat expensive, neighborhood seafood restaurant (as implied by the name: Gibby's Seafood Restaurant). It was the first "real" job I ever had, having only ever cut lawns and rented Godzilla movies out of my backpack previously. It was the first time I had had coworkers, a boss, a schedule, and an hourly wage.

I'll start with my coworkers. There was Rob, who trained me. Rob was a conniving 18-year old (I was 16) who looked like he was 25 and had no intention of going to college. Busing at Gibby's was all he needed. Rob also smoked a lot. The nicer female waitresses warned me to make sure Rob didn't try to skim too much off my tips while he was training me, which he did. That was my first experience with graft. This was also my first experience with people using smoke breaks to take unscheduled breaks they otherwise wouldn't be allowed to take.

About a month in a new busboy, Dave, showed up. Dave was 40. I learned in the first 5 minutes that Dave was a recovering crack addict. A decade on now, I wouldn't be too surprised about that when I met Dave---what with his glassy eyes, vacant stares, and unflagging utter confusion---but at 16 I was pretty freshfaced when it came to the ravages of drug abuse. He was a nice enough guy, but surprisingly, Dave vanished a couple weeks later. Godspeed Dave, whatever seafood restaurant you ended up at.

There were the dishwashers, who at any restaurant are by far the most jovial but also the ones you don't want to cross. One of them would always comment on my "pearly whites" (teeth). I guess those G.I. Joe PSA's really hammered home that point on brushing your teeth.

My bosses were a curious crew, too. The guy who hired me was a family friend, his name was Roger or something. Roger was one of two managers, the other was Steve, who was a prick. The owner, Mr. Gibby, was a bigger prick. They all had moustaches. Mr. Gibby got really upset once because his friend who came to the restaurant couldn't get buffalo wings since they had run out (in restaurant world, "we ran out" means that the cooks just don't want to cook it anymore), but then he found out that the cooks had made me a heaping plate of wings. Those wings were delicious but maybe not worth it. The real kicker came one day when I found out that Roger had been fired because he called out Mr. Gibby and Steve when they had been found at the restaurant late one night liquoring up some younger ladies and shenanigans had ensued. That was a pleasant atmosphere for me, all around.

Then there were the customers. I remember two customer "situations" vividly to this day. The first was a big fat whale of a woman who complained when I accidentally put water in her glass that was apparently Sprite instead. How could I be so foolish? She moaned about how stupid I was to make that mistake and demanded a free Sprite. I guess all the fat in her brain made her forget that refills were free, so I punched her in her fat face and slit her throat.

The worst nights I had there was when I was on crab deck duty. The crab deck was a big concrete block with a shitload of tables where people ate steamed crabs, and where people put all their trash on the ground and laughed at me on the way out because I had to clean up their fucking mess. One night, after cleaning up the whole deck (which took about an hour) and just before closing, a flock of about 20 Iranians flooded in, mostly children, to eat crabs. The mess these fuckers made in 30 minutes would make Jesus Christ cry. AND, if that wasn't bad enough, while I cleaned up the biological hazard they had left, the local radio station, 98 Rock, decided to play the entirety of Rush's latest album Test for Echo. Oh my god, I think I ground away half my teeth that night. I also vowed mortal vengeance on Geddy Lee, which will be exacted come Hell or high water.

Note: When looking up "busboy" and "crabs" in Google's image search, be very, very careful.

Of course someone else on the Internet has already thought of that

Sometimes I'm just amazed by the internet. If you think you're the first person to think of something, you can immediately prove yourself wrong. And, if you're like me, you enjoy having silent arguments with yourself even though you somehow manage to lose them more often that not.

So after receiving a poorly phrased email one day, I thought it'd be funny to have a day where everyone talks like Yoda, or "Talk Like Yoda Day." It wouldn't really be funny, but when you're at work for 9 hours a day just about anything can be amusing. The feeling of blinding boredom and monotony itself can even be amusing in that sort of hopeless put-your-head-in-your-hands way.

Surprisingly, but not really, it took me 5 seconds to find www.talklikeyoda.com. I like to think that I'm a pretty random individual, but the internet showed me otherwise. It was pretty foolish of me to think that I had been the first person to become so bent of mind at work to conceive of Talk Like Yoda Day. People have been bored at work for centuries, who am I to be the big shit? What gall. And not only does TLYD already exist (as a website no less), its warped creator went so far as to pick a day: May 21. Why May 21? Who the fuck knows.

KevinC fronts amazing effort to clinch Expedia Challenge

Newcomer KevinC has all but secured the title of Expedia Challenge champion with an impressive entry:

Leave Washington-Dulles (IAD) -> Chicago O'Hare (ORD) -> London (LHR) -> Islamabad-Rawalpindi (ISB)

Total duration: 51 h 38 min with connections

For the sake of fair competition, I'll give the peanut gallery 24 hours from 9:30am Tuesday to find a longer flight. Barring that unlikely outcome, I think we've found our winner. Nice work KevinC.

A new leader in the Expedia Challenge!

I've heard from a lot of people that they've tried to beat adspar's time in this contest, but just couldn't breach the 48 hours mark. Well, this marks a welcome sea change in adspar's impregnability. He can kiss that free case of beer goodbye.

Clocking in at a particularly grueling 48 hours and 30 minutes, beating the previous leader by 20 minutes in his trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, is Brice Lord.

The trip:

Washington Dulles (IAD) -> Chicago O'Hare (ORD) -> London Heathrow (LHR) -> Islamabad-Rawalpindi (ISB)

48 hours 30 minutes

The proof:

Since I don't want to win my own game, I'll give everyone until Monday to beat my time. If no one has beaten me by then, I will receive a free slap on the back and a night of self-stimulatory romance. Let the game continue! (If you're new to the game, scroll down for the gist, etc.)

Note: All new entries will require a screenshot as proof. Just hit the PrintScreen/SysReq button and paste the image into a powerpoint file, then email the file to endthecolawars at gmail dot com. Also post your trip time in the comments of this post or the original post. And good luck fuckers.

The Bored at Work Challenge #1: Expedia

It's no secret that we get bored at work, and it's not a secret that we fill countless hours finding novel ways to occupy our time so as to avoid both work and the inevitable boredom both work and not doing work create.

Sometimes I go onto Expedia and just check out how much flights to London, or Barcelona, or Shanghai, or Tokyo, or Santiago, or Johannesburg cost just to give myself a little thrill. Out of this little exercise, I created a fun game. Please interpret "fun" loosely here.

THE EXPEDIA CHALLENGE

If you want to kill some time, I challenge YOU, the reader, to find the longest travel time for a one-way trip you can on Expedia. We'll have a few basic guidelines:

1. The trip must originate from Dulles Airport (IAD)

2. You must use Expedia. This is to account for possible discrepancies across websites.

3. Layovers are allowed, but stopovers are not. That is, you cannot make the trip go from IAD -> DEN on May 15 and then DEN -> SFO on Sept 20. That's stupid.

4. You must post your itinerary in the Comments section with some basic info, e.g. March 28, IAD -> FRA -> GVA (8 h 43 m)

5. Multiple entries are allowed.

Other than that, you're free to roam.

The winner of the competition gets a free case of beer. I'm going to check your work, so don't cheat.

I'll start off the competition, and I'm also going to participate. Check the comments section to see who the current leader is.

CURRENT LEADER: Brice Lord, IAD -> ORD -> LHR -> ISB (48 h 30 m with connections)

Pop Quiz

1. I've been at my job since September 2004; that's 28 months. How many emails do you think I have sent?

A) 1500
B) 2500
C) 3500
D) 4500
E) 5500
F) 6500
G) 7500

Answer: If you guessed A,B,C,D,E,or F, you're wrong. I've sent just about 9500 emails in the past 28 months. That's ...opening Excel... 340 emails per month, and 16 emails per work day.

2. I regularly interact with notable scientists, and have met and worked with several Nobel Laureates. How many Nobel Laureates do you think I've made out with?

A) 0
B) 1
C) 2
D) 3 or more

Answer: If you guessed B, you are correct. I made out with Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, known especially for his calculation of gravitational collapse despite electron degeneracy pressure, a year ago during a conference in Prague on Earth-bound extramarital objects.

3. I am responsible for a variety of projects at work, from the small, easy, and quick to the complex, frustrating, and endless. What moment in my professional career has given me the biggest feeling of accomplishment?

A) Figuring out a way to cut $10,000 from a report's printing budget to keep the project on track
B) Receiving a promotion after a year on the job
C) Meeting Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
D) Being offered a postdoctoral position from a university professor when I don't even have a Master's
E) Succesfully shooting a rubber band across my cubicle and landing it so that it hangs from a thumbtack stuck in the wall.

Answer: If you guessed E, you're right "on target." It took me at least 3 months to get the firing trajectory and power level just right so that I could even just hit the thumbtack; sticking it onto the tack, however, was God's work. The rubber band still hangs there to remind me of why I'm here.

4. People who know I do something "sciency" often confuse where I work with other notable sciency organizations. Which organization is most commonly confused with where I work?

A) National Science Foundation
B) National Aeronautics and Space Administration
C) The Weather Channel
D) The CNN.com Astrology Page
E) National Car Rental

Answer: If it was left up to you, I would be trying to rent you a convertible instead of the compact economy car you asked for.

5. According to the general public, the Universe consists primarily of and is interconnected by:

A) Transcendentalist ether
B) Very thin, very long rope
C) Failed dreams
D) Failed hopes
E) Griffins
F) Marshmallows
G) Dark matter

Answer: As delicious as it sounds, F is incorrect, despite what the Jet-Puffed company has tried to tell you. According to the latest astronomical research, swarms of the mythical half-eagle, half-lion Griffin inhabit the heavens, policing the Cosmic Order and ensuring that the Infinity Gauntlet, Rings of Power, and Symbiote Suit are never used again.