Selfish Crab

Goddamn asynchronous data processing paradigm. I meant to cancel last night’s upload of flickr photos after I realized I forgot to post-process them (lighting, white balance, touchups).

Apparently, flickrExport’s “Cancel” button doesn’t really mean cancel. It means: “Hi, let me try to send a cancel interupt to the thread currently uploading your photos. … Oops, it didn’t work. Isn’t multithreaded software the darnedest thing? Let me keep this a secret from you so that people will view your photos during the next day and see photos that really should be private and then make comments and notes on them. Then, you can come back tomorrow, see these photos that shouldn’t be here, begin deleting them until you realize that people made notes and comments on them already. Now you’ve deleted half of them; the fragile sense of community participation you were building is now destroyed, you stupid shit. Now you’re sitting awake at 1 AM trying to recover a sense of privacy and a sense of order to the presentation of your digital life; in short, trying to finish what I, the upload tool, started. How the fuck are ya?”

But since that does not fit on a button, maybe at least: “Cancel…”

I apologize if I deleted your comments.  Make them again when I post it for real.   Everything’s hidden again. I can’t take this shit.  Bed time.

# 2006 Mar 31    {Life}    1

I recently emailed an old friend I hadn’t heard from in about two years. I must have written something like “this is [crab], from [selfish high school], if you remember me”, because the reply began:

[Crab],

You romance the impossible if you think that my life has been so
eventful in the past year that I’ve forgotten who you are. Aside from
joining the military, moving to rural Pakistan, and having a baby out
of wedlock, nothing has changed.

Gosh. “romance the impossible”. What a perfect little phrase. That made the rest of my day, until Unnamed E-commerce Merchant / Hellspawn showed its true form and made me write error handling for 100+ cases.

I took a break after work and went to a staff party celebrating a recent milestone. At the party, I met the former campus priest.

Co-Worker1: Father, you should bless Project Jetplane.

Priest: Sure, sure, I would be glad to.

Selfish Crab: Yeah, it could use some divine lubrication.

Then, awkward silence.

# 2006 Mar 30    {Life, work}    #

Over the weekend, I went to Canada.

Thoughts and pictures still being processed. This post is to tide you over.

Anyone care to fill me in on anything I missed (life- or web-wise)?

# 2006 Mar 29    {Life}    2

Why can’t you handle all e-commerce errors until a successful transaction, at which point you post data back to my form?  Is that so hard; so much to ask for?  Why is it an all or nothing deal?   Let’s meet in the middle.  You do the hard, obscure error-cases (i.e. expired credit card from Kazakhstan), I’ll do the pretty-pretty successful transaction case.

Please consider it.

sigh,
crab

# 2006 Mar 22    {work}    #

Ugh, I just realized a majority of my posts have comments closed, even though I intend for they to be open.  No wonder you people haven’t been responding to my delicious wit.

I’m blaming Wordpress.  Bugs at work, bugs at home. Sigh.

# 2006 Mar 21    {meta}    2

9ish – Roll in.

9:13 – Check e-mail. Check servers

10:15 – Miss Boss.

10:18 – Clean desk, shuffle papers, iterate through bugs.

11:06 – Push out Linux updates.

Read the rest of this entry »

# 2006 Mar 21    {Life, work}    1

If you were to sort my schools by their U.S. News ranking, displayed with my admissions results thus far, you would get:

4. Columbia – Rejected
5. NYU – Rejected
11. UC Berkeley – Rejected
15. UCLA – Wait-listed
18. USC – ________
20. Boston U – Wait-listed
20. GW – Wait-listed
27. Fordham – _______
39. UC Hastings – Accepted
58. Cardozo – Accepted
58. Loyola – Accepted
110. Santa Clara – Accepted

Sigh.

Mar 28 Update: Updated with Boston.

Apr 2 Update: Updated with Santa Clara. And changed Fordham back to nothing. I’m apparently “pending”. Which is neither accepted, rejected, or wait-listed.

May 7 Update:  Updated UCLA.  sucks to my assmar.  I don’t know why I bother updating.

# 2006 Mar 19    {Life}    4

He was starting to smell like goat cheese and diapers anyway.

I probably should have taken some photos of Boss’s last day, but I was busy wiping my eyes clear of tears born from an unrequited mentorship now made asunder.

Now, as soon we purge the place of remaining loyalists, we can get back to your regularly scheduled under-appreciated operational duties.  And maybe one of our C’s will become a U.  Putsch!

# 2006 Mar 18    {work}    #

Scene 1

Person 1: We need a new lifeguard. Can you swim?

Person 2: Yes.

Person 1: You sure?

Person 2: Yeah, I’ve been swimming steadily and regularly for two years.

Person 1: Ok great. Oh by the way, can you go to this meeting with Central Underwater Integrity Team about pool cleaning?

Read the rest of this entry »

# 2006 Mar 16    {work}    2

The inevitable and inaccessible answer: Drawing Restraint 9

The core idea of Drawing Restraint 9 is the relationship between self-imposed resistance and creativity, a theme it symbolically tracks through the construction and transformation of a vast sculpture of liquid Vaseline, called “The Field”, which is molded, poured, bisected and reformed on the deck of the ship over the course of the film.

I once visited the Guggenheim when Cremaster Cycle 3 was on exhibit. End of story.

# 2006 Mar 16    {Links}    1

I can’t get over this story of Villanova forward Allen Ray having his eyeball popped out during a scramble for a loose ball during Friday’s game against Pittsburgh.

In case it happens to you: My Eyeball Just Fell Out of Its Socket, What should I do? (Slate)

# 2006 Mar 14    {Links}    #

It’s gone unspoken for too long: say what you want about his ability to adhere to development guidelines, but Boss can hit the high notes dead on. With his departure, who will be left to belt out the hits? Who will be the office’s new sultan of singing? The crown prince of Cake? The Raj of R.E.M.? The prince of … Prince?

It sure ain’t me. Let’s be honest, when I open my mouth you can see the morale drain from my co-workers’ faces. I’m off-key, tone deaf, out of sync. I sing two bars of music three measures ahead. I don’t know the lyrics and I make up crappy new ones. I yelp. I warble. I can’t harmonize, only sow discord. I wouldn’t know melody if it bought me a drink at the bar. In short, I am a brazen sonic assault.

I guess we’ll have to request that a “Ballads” portion to be added to Boss.NEXT interviews.

2006 Mar 14 Update:  The man is a transitioning machine.  He gave me tips.  I have to do vocal exercises.

# 2006 Mar 12    {work}    3

Last night, went out; stumbled home. Apparently, I fired up a browser, visited some sites, and ordered some strange items. This I know from these receipt emails in my inbox this morning. Alcohol is that twisted bitch that banishes judgement and keeps credit cards at your fingertips.

# 2006 Mar 11    {Life}    #

But the people did not listen to God.
“Seek out Rajesh the sage,” they cried out,
“and heed his counsel we must.”
Rajesh came forward and advised them:
“Reset the CMOS, and your troubles shall disappear.”
This they did, to no effect.
And the people teared out their hair
and fell to their knees.
Again, the people sought out Rajesh the wise.
And he told them:
“Attempt power supplies with 450 Watts greater,
and you shall be made whole.”
This they heard, and so spawned a quest.

# 2006 Mar 10    {Life}    #

In the beginning, the people worked the land
and God saw that they were good.
So He rewarded them with a festival of games.
For many fortnights, the people gamed.
They played much and became idle
and this angered God.
So God smote their motherboard
and the people gamed no more.
And the people cursed God for this.
So He bade the people,
Walk through the Wildfire
and ye shall be forgiven.

# 2006 Mar 9    {Life, work}    1

Damn you Windows Media Player. Why must your Shuffle button be so non obvious? Because of you, the Dean’s first notice of my existence is me botching a playback of audio clips in jest of his voice and personality.

On the way to absolution, I will post the clips (but not now because Wordpress’s file-upload feature is a suckhole. now up.) If you were wondering: to create them, the text (written by someone else, punched up by me) are fed into AT&T’s demo of their text-to-speech technology.

Update: see after the jump for the files. Read the rest of this entry »

# 2006 Mar 4    {work}    #

A thesis’s completion has inspired me. A sampling of my own recent work:

on life

Tonight I sought the meaning of life.
If you were wondering, it shant be found
in an evening of Day of Defeat: Source.

on love

[edit: there was another "poem" here, but I actually liked it and am keeping it for myself, to reshape some more. Yeah, I know, this post died on the table.]

# 2006 Mar 2    {Life}    #