Note: this is a reply to Julien’s entry “ugh.” It started running away on me, so I made it its own entry.

Heh. Julien considers his blog a “public venue.”

Anyway, yeah. Thing. What was I going to say?

(Read more …)

Yeah. Stress.

(Read more …)

Have I mentioned I love my new toy? I’ve been taking photos, uploading them, clearing my phone’s memory, taking more photos… It’s fun! Yay! I have a camera!

Remember this little guy?

This is the last month you will be able to check out the coolness at montrealmob.com. The domain name is expiring and we have no desire to renew it. Why? Because that’s kind of the point. Flash Mobbing was cool while it lasted, and it lasted exactly the right amount of time. If you are one of the dozens of people who wrote me saying there should have been more mobs or one of the people going on about how you’re going to do flash mobs for the rest of your life, you are a loser. And kinda stupid: you never got the idea of them in the first place.

Hmmm… I still have all the archives of the mailing list. I wonder if I feel like posting them all somewhere?

I’m in a line of work where one can get away with at least some amount of eccentricity. I even think if it’s lacking people might say “oh, he’s not a real programmer.”

However, even I am subject to the vaguely defined rules of business etiquette. I’m not allowed to wear stuff that is inappropriate for an office environment. Correction: I’m not allowed to wear anything that is inappropriate for a male in an office environment. So in general short pants and open-toed shoes are verboten. It’s fine for a woman to wear a skirt, of course, and open shoes, and other stuff that helps with air circulation in the hot summer. At least I’m not forced to wear long sleeves all year or, even worse, a jacket.

But lest I sound like I’m whining about how difficult us males have it, I’m not. I don’t think this is a question of discrimination, it’s more of a stupid clinging to old values and practices. See, it used to be that conformity in men’s attire was all the rage. So there’d be an office (or party, or gathering, or whatever) full of identically-dressed men. The women all wore traditionally feminine clothing, skirts and dresses and what have you, but they varied, because their jobs basically were to be pleasant to look at. So women’s clothing was colourful, patterned, in all sorts of different cuts, and so on.

At some point* it became less acceptable for women to be entirely excluded from the business side of… well, business. And there was a trend of clothing that was basically men’s clothing, adapted to the sort of stuff that women are supposed to wear. This gave birth to the skirt-suit and regular suits cut for women. Also, it became okay for a woman to wear trousers to work if she wanted. Anyway, the restrictions on women’s clothing were loosened because this was seen as a step that would stop the pigeon-holing of the sex into low-skill eye candy. It’s not necessarily true that the skirt exists because of oppression but it is true that requiring women to wear only dress-type stuff is stupid. Now that the feminist movement has been around for a while and has gained legitimacy in the eyes of the people who make decisions (and now that many of those people are not men) any given person likely fears the repercussions of openly suggesting that women are supposed to only be in certain roles in business.

Thing is, there was never any major movement to change the way men dress at work. Obviously there’s never been any need for a “Men’s Liberation” movement or anything. Men certainly haven’t said “we want to be allowed to dress in women’s clothing at work because we want the same level of respect accorded women.” So there was never any real push to relax the restrictions on male business attire, except one: the “internet bubble”.

Perhaps one thing the dot-com boom did that was helpful was to legitimize the idea of a casual office environment. Once everyone in pre-boom brick-and-mortar companies got sort of used to the idea of a bunch of businessmen walking around in pantashorts and “Fuck la mode” t-shirts, it became less atrocious to show up wearing cargos instead of slacks. When every new company had chill rooms and oxygen bars and gyms, it became a lot more easy to accept the idea of an employee leaving his desk once a day to take a ten-minute walk around the block. This is all part of the apparent trend of businesses toward casualness.

Change, though, comes slowly. Especially in the business world. People are still inclined to institute requirements that hearken back to the strictly conservative outfits of victorian England. I never quite understood the logic behind figuring that it was better to do business with a guy in a tie. Meh.

The bottom line is that I’m not supposed to show up at work with my hairy knees and sweaty toes poking out everywhere. But I do anyway, because sometimes I just don’t feel like getting home and needing a bilge pump to get the sweat out of my clothing. I’d like HR to tell me I’m not supposed to wear open-toed shoes to work when all the women here do. I wonder if I’d actually have the guts to put up a stink.

I’m not bothering to put these in chronological order. If you’re interested in knowing when stuff happened, Google is your friend.

You know how when you go away for the weekend, you feel like you’ve been on vacation? I mean, the industry-standard work week has a two-day vacation built right into it, but somehow when you spend those two days out of town if feels different from lounging about in town. More relaxing, more refreshing. Unless the rugrats are with you, but I’m deliciously spawn-free.

Well, this week I had a friend in from out of town staying at my place. I’m not sure if it was because he brought his “I’m on vacation” vibe with him, or because I just didn’t follow my usual heavy sleeping routine, but by the end of the weekend I felt like I had had a couple of days out of town.

Pretty cool, yes, except that I suspect this week will be a stressful one. More on that later.

… to the True North, Strong and Free.

How’s this: a US Army GI* realizes the war in Iraq is illegal and immoral. He applies for conscientious objector status and is denied. Realizing he will be forced to kill, and that refusing to do so will land him in prison, he follows what he sees as his only course of action: fleeing to Canada. And applying for refugee status.

Quoth he: “I am not willing to kill or be killed in the service of ideology and economic gain” [source]

There was a second guy doing the same thing. It didn’t sound like they came to their decisions together, or even knew one another, but I may be wrong.

Holy shit, I totally forgot to thank Jake for sending me that link.

Look at that delicious wrapness. I’m really digging these Subway wraps. You know how bread sometimes feels like it’s just padding? Like it’s there to make you feel full even though there wasn’t all that much filling in the sandwich? Well, yay wrap!

Also, this allows me to show off my new toy. I just got the camera attachment to my phone, and I’m going crazy photoing stuff.

Plus, there’s a not-so-subtle plug for my new cool hat (seen in background)

Or perhaps I’m just kinda giddy because someone is coming into town tonight!

I had a creepy dream the other night.

There had been a previous dream, in which I was somehow pitted against Anonymous Evil Megalocorp X. I guess it must have been doing bad stuff like abducting people and killing people off and stuff. That dream led into this one, and some elements leaked over.

There was an earthquake. At first I thought it was AEMX that was behind it, but turns out it was just an earthquake. A pretty bad one, though; lots of structural damage to homes. I found one such that looked like it had just kind of tilted, breaking seams and jamming the door shut. I went inside and found the house’s only resident, a woman I didn’t know, in bad shape. There was a wide crack in the wall along the floor where the walls had shifted. At first I thought her foot was caught in the crack, but then I saw that foot, along with her other foot and one of her hands, was missing. They had apparently been amputated, and were neatly bound with white bandages.

Again, I thought that AEMX had cut off this poor woman’s hand and feet. She assured me they hadn’t. Shortly after the earthquake (a few days ago now) a truck had driven by, loudspeakers blaring a message saying:

Many of you are trapped in your houses. Water mains have ruptured and so your tap water is toxic. To escape alive you must follow the following steps:
1. Find a mason jar.
2. Put your hand in the jar.
3. Leave your hand in the jar so that over the next few days it melts off.
4. [...]

The instructions went on to explain how to remove one’s feet. I’m not sure if they ever explained how this was supposed to help trapped residents escape.

It’s always nice to see a minority or other underrepresented group gain some recognition someplace like the US District Court. That’s why it warms my heart that the latest in a line of oppressed, struggling would-be politicians has gained the endorsement of a stand-up American like Orrin Hatch. It’s about time that America had someone in the law-making process who has the courage and good sense to speak out against the lies spread by the oppressive non-fundamentalist regime. Someone who has the wisdom to dispel myths of gender equality, to openly challenge all the whiny “rape victims” who claim to have been impregnated by their “attackers” — something the honorable J. Leon Holmes knows to be an impossibility.

The grassroots movement against the fascist notions of equality and reason, not to mention the near-blashemous, superstitious practice of “science”, has gained an important boost over the past few years. With the help of Dominar President Bush and his puppeteers team of crusaders he has finally brought valuable (more-or-less) Christian values to the country, at a time when intolerance and heavy-handedness are most important.

So I say congratulations to our american neighbours. Congratulations for moving ever more toward the religion-governed state that has been lacking for so long, the state your founding fathers dreamed of, the ideal that makes your political system the envy of the free world.

Now I need to figure out a way to become a snake so I can live in Echidne’s new world.

Hm. Maybe I should make this a regular feature. That would be cool. Maybe like, every Friday I’d have a rundown of the cool tech shit I’d heard about that week.

(Read more …)