Mild Amusement

A while back, I had dinner with a friend. This was someone I've known for a while, so we were both pretty comfortable around each other. That meant that no one had to pull any punches, and we both heard the raw truth when it came to telling our stories. Of course, that also meant that the conversation was infinitely more hilarious as a result. To begin with, I knew that she was dealing with some drama in her life at the moment (she claimed that it followed her around). I didn't quite know the source of all the drama, but I knew something was up. So, I asked her what was going on. I won't go in to the gory details, but she was dealing with someone who had once been a friend. Things had gotten messy for a while, and she had ultimately cut her ties with this person. Things didn't stay that way. The ex-friend had made something of a half-hearted attempt to reconnect, in the form of an email. Without being a gossip, suffice it to say that my friend did not think it was gen...

A little while back, I was talking to the Mild Ex, and she commented that the air conditioning at her place was acting up. In it of itself, that was a bad thing. However, this conversation happened to take place right in the middle of a miniature heat wave. So the fact that the air conditioning was performing less than optimally was less of an annoyance and more of an actual problem. It wasn't going to kill her or anything, but it certainly didn't make her days any more pleasant. Worse yet, I wasn't in a position to remedy the situation in any discernible way. For one, I was sitting at home, she was sitting at home, and our two homes happened to be quite a few miles apart. Secondly, even if I had driven over there, I wasn't sure that I had the knowledge or the magical powers required to restore her air conditioning to satisfactory levels. Things were not looking good for our hero (that'd be me). Well, out of some combination of sheer curiosity, dogged determinat...

A couple of weeks ago, I was heading out to meet up with some friends.  I wasn't exactly looking forward to the drive; it was a rainy Friday night, and I was leaving right around rush hour.  Still, it made the most sense for me to leave at that time, so I steeled myself for the journey. However, as is wont to happen in my life, plans very quickly changed.  The mother of a couple of infants from the day care was home with a sick child, and she was going to be late to come pick up the other two.  Now, she knew full well that she had to bundle up a sick child, get both herself & the sick child to our house, pick up two more children, and then march right back to her house with three little kids.  Still, she didn't even question this plan, because that's more or less what parents do. My mom, on the other hand, realized that I was headed in the same direction as the children's house.  So, rather than making this lady jump through all sorts of hoops, my m...

I happen to be the oldest of three siblings, so when I was growing up, I was often tasked with helping out my younger siblings.  Not that they were incompetent or incapable by any means, but that's just how it goes when you're the oldest child.  Among other things, I've helped my siblings write papers, prepare speeches, prep resumes, and write code (my sister's major was very similar to mine).  Let's just say that it's not a rare occurrence. Still, my sister managed to surprise me.  She's into arts & crafts type stuff, so she's constantly working on different projects.  That's not my thing, but I can appreciate the work she puts in.  She also knows that I'm generally far less capable about these things than she is, so it's not like we talk about the details of the construction or anything.  Nevertheless, she randomly asked me for help on one of these projects. It turns out that the project in question was this  origami box thing that s...

I think I've mentioned it before, but I try to do at least one good deed every week.  It doesn't have to be something spectacular, just something that somehow makes the world a slightly better place.  Helping to get someone an answer to a problem they had at work counts as a good deed, for example.  So does doing the dishes for someone else.  You get the idea; it doesn't have to be a grandiose production, but my aim is to do my part to not let the world suck. Regardless, I've been having a tougher time lately with this.  I will volunteer to help other people out in some capacity, and they callously blow me off.  It's disheartening, really.  It almost makes me want to give up on this whole good deed thing. Take my coworker/friend who also happens to be a software developer.  She was in the final stretch of a project, so she was understandably busy.  Seeing her plight, I offered her a simple snippet of code to try to make her work go faster...

I think I might be slipping on the social hierarchy at work. I've never exactly been at the top, mind you. But I get by, you know? I have a non-trivial number of friends at work, and they, in turn, are socially capable. I kind of figure that if my friends aren't social outcasts, then by the transitive property, I'm not one, either (really, I'm just riding their coattails). At least that was the working theory until today. Today, the guy I used to work with emailed me back about a birthday lunch. We usually try to celebrate people's birthdays with at least a lunch in their honor. If we know the person better or can get something together, we'll do dinner or hit a club, but that really depends on the circumstances. Anyhow, I emailed this guy yesterday asking him if he wanted to do a birthday lunch. Well, the question was more like, "when are you free for said lunch?" And he didn't get back to me. Mind you, this is an office environment at a...

An old friend of mine decided to have a poker night recently, and yours truly was invited. Now I'm not a great poker player, but that sounded like a very laid back way to have a good time on a Friday night, so I readily accepted. I showed up a few minutes late, so there were already a few other people there when I walked in. Even better, when I went to take off my shoes, I accidentally yanked on the wrong side of the shoelace. So I basically just knotted it tighter, and since it had been raining a little bit, my wet hands took a little longer than usual to fix this problem. There's no way for me to confirm this, but I do suspect that this dashed any psychological edge I may have potentially had for the rest of the night. After I dealt with my shoelace mishap, I took a place at the table. It was a $10 buy-in, and there were 5 people at the table. There were going to be 2 more coming a little later, though, so the total payout was $70. That's right, they were playi...

Every year, my company participates in United Way's Week of Caring . It's a good cause, and it's an excuse to get out of the office, so I usually agree to help out. I'll let you decide which of the two is a bigger motivator, but if you pick the second one, we need to have words. Anyhow, this past week was the Week of Caring. There is actually quite a bit of work that needs to be done before the actual event, so every project is assigned a coordinator. Really, it's a sensible way to make sure that the organizations we work with get the help they need. One interesting side effect of this system, though, is that the project coordinator is now a position that gets recognition/exposure. As a result, the various clubs & employee organizations try to show a presence by snapping up projects, putting their people in the coordinator positions, and then filling the project slots with their people. The newbie club is no different, so they scooped up three projects...

are no match for a 3 year old. I was supposed to run 3 times this week, with my long run being today. Normally, I try to space out my runs (Tu-Th-Sat, or Tu-Fr- Su ) to give myself a little bit of recovery time. I can go two days in a row, but it's not fun. This week, however, I didn't quite feel right on Friday. I had done an extra CrossFit workout on Thursday night, and it was all legs. So, I planned on an early morning run yesterday & a long run today. Not an ideal schedule, but I was hoping that with a little bit of luck, I could make it work. I got the Saturday morning run in, and it went fine. My base pace is picking up a bit, so I finished 5.5 miles in a better time than I expected. Even better, I managed to get up at 7AM to do it. That gave me plenty of time to rest during the day. I figured that if I pushed off today's long run until mid-morning or early afternoon, that'd be 24+ hours of rest. Enter the 3 year old. Yesterday, our family happened...