(no subject)
It's 3 AM (<90s-music>i must be lonely) and I'm heading back to New York for a week. I suppose if I used all of my wondrous powers of sulking I could stay here in Boston over the Christmas week into New Years'... but whether I stay in Boston or head back, it's likely to be fairly boring. And at least if I head back, my parents get the, uh, pleasure of my company.
As of now I'm not sure if I'm going to just stay up all night packing and then head out to South Station to catch a Chinatown bus at some hour of the morning. An argument in its favor is that my apartment is, to put it kindly, a pig sty. There is no horizontal surface not covered with junk. Beats me why this is completely acceptable while living in this place full-time, but if I leave it for a week or so, I feel obligated to clean it up at least somewhat. So that's what I'm doing now, while kind of simultaneously checking for combats in Skyrates and writing this entry. And checking e-mail. And tagging new music. Which goes to show that I just suck at focusing on things.
When in school I could just say "yeah, I'm leaving sometime after all my finals end and coming back sometime in early IAP, before Mystery Hunt starts", and this would be perfect, thanks to the flexibility of the Chinatown bus, MIT, and my parents. But except for 12/25 and 1/1, business continues as usual, which means I'm burning a whole lot of my hard-earned days off. I get 15 a year, and four of them are going into use over this week, and another one or possibly two for Mystery Hunt later on in January.
Due to the way personal days and sick days need to be accounted for, the estimate for how many of each you'll be taking needs to be in a couple of weeks before the end of each quarter. So, on Wednesday, not having planned anything out at all, I decided that I would head back to NY on Saturday at some point, and head back a week later, on either Saturday or Sunday.
For the past month and a half or so my project at work has been working on a Facebook app, called Local Picks. Much like the point of TripAdvisor's main site is to provide people with reviews of hotels, attractions, etc from fellow travelers, the point of Local Picks is to do the same for restaurants, harnessing the vast number of Facebook users to provide an enormous base of data to actually make this task possible.
It's weird. I'd resisted getting a Facebook account for quite a long time, since I'm not really into the whole social networking thing, this LiveJournal notwithstanding. I have other channels with which to talk with people I am likely to interact with in person, and I don't really talk with people who I pretty much won't see.
This is wonderful and self-sufficient until something kicks off a memory in my brain, reminding me of a person or place or event from The Time Before, and I feel sad that I've lost touch with someone else, until the memory would fade and I could go back to being productive.
That said, now that I've been essentially forced to get an account, and have had it for months, I haven't really done anything with it. Maybe that's something I can do when I'm bored over the vacation -- find all the people I've lost touch with and, well, friend them. God, it sounds so pathetic when I write it out like that.
But I really always thought of Facebook "friendship" as, at least, some kind of passing acquaintanceship. Not that you have to be BFFs or any of that crap, but at least that given a name and a picture, you can recall who that guy/girl was and maybe a couple of fun factoids.
So then what does it mean when someone friends you when you have no idea who they are? Of course this gives you the opportunity to look at their profile and their friends list to see if that rings a bell, but, what if it doesn't? Do you just say, "yes, I am a 'friend' of this person who I've never met in person, and who is probably at least three or four degrees of separation away from me"?
...and, come to think of it, that's what I've done with LiveJournal, isn't it? There are people on my friendslist who I don't know in person. But somehow that situation seems different. There's that thin veneer of anonymity that comes with hiding behind a stupid username, as compared with baring your name and picture (not to mention a record of whatever you're doing on Facebook) to some complete stranger.
Eh, who knows? Maybe it just comes with the territory. Like I said, I don't really understand the social networking thing. Just another one of those little things helping me feel more isolated, I suppose.
Requisite hunt update: the team is close to its limits, there was angst which is hopefully mostly resolved, and we'll know where we're hunting from in a couple of weeks. It seems like it's going to work out.
lyrics that came on just now:
that which doesn't kill me strengthens me
repeated end-to-endlessly
if i'm so goddamned strong now
how come i feel so lonely?
-- Mary Prankster, "Takes His Place"
It's now past 4. Less rambling, more cleaning and packing. Off I go.
As of now I'm not sure if I'm going to just stay up all night packing and then head out to South Station to catch a Chinatown bus at some hour of the morning. An argument in its favor is that my apartment is, to put it kindly, a pig sty. There is no horizontal surface not covered with junk. Beats me why this is completely acceptable while living in this place full-time, but if I leave it for a week or so, I feel obligated to clean it up at least somewhat. So that's what I'm doing now, while kind of simultaneously checking for combats in Skyrates and writing this entry. And checking e-mail. And tagging new music. Which goes to show that I just suck at focusing on things.
When in school I could just say "yeah, I'm leaving sometime after all my finals end and coming back sometime in early IAP, before Mystery Hunt starts", and this would be perfect, thanks to the flexibility of the Chinatown bus, MIT, and my parents. But except for 12/25 and 1/1, business continues as usual, which means I'm burning a whole lot of my hard-earned days off. I get 15 a year, and four of them are going into use over this week, and another one or possibly two for Mystery Hunt later on in January.
Due to the way personal days and sick days need to be accounted for, the estimate for how many of each you'll be taking needs to be in a couple of weeks before the end of each quarter. So, on Wednesday, not having planned anything out at all, I decided that I would head back to NY on Saturday at some point, and head back a week later, on either Saturday or Sunday.
For the past month and a half or so my project at work has been working on a Facebook app, called Local Picks. Much like the point of TripAdvisor's main site is to provide people with reviews of hotels, attractions, etc from fellow travelers, the point of Local Picks is to do the same for restaurants, harnessing the vast number of Facebook users to provide an enormous base of data to actually make this task possible.
It's weird. I'd resisted getting a Facebook account for quite a long time, since I'm not really into the whole social networking thing, this LiveJournal notwithstanding. I have other channels with which to talk with people I am likely to interact with in person, and I don't really talk with people who I pretty much won't see.
This is wonderful and self-sufficient until something kicks off a memory in my brain, reminding me of a person or place or event from The Time Before, and I feel sad that I've lost touch with someone else, until the memory would fade and I could go back to being productive.
That said, now that I've been essentially forced to get an account, and have had it for months, I haven't really done anything with it. Maybe that's something I can do when I'm bored over the vacation -- find all the people I've lost touch with and, well, friend them. God, it sounds so pathetic when I write it out like that.
But I really always thought of Facebook "friendship" as, at least, some kind of passing acquaintanceship. Not that you have to be BFFs or any of that crap, but at least that given a name and a picture, you can recall who that guy/girl was and maybe a couple of fun factoids.
So then what does it mean when someone friends you when you have no idea who they are? Of course this gives you the opportunity to look at their profile and their friends list to see if that rings a bell, but, what if it doesn't? Do you just say, "yes, I am a 'friend' of this person who I've never met in person, and who is probably at least three or four degrees of separation away from me"?
...and, come to think of it, that's what I've done with LiveJournal, isn't it? There are people on my friendslist who I don't know in person. But somehow that situation seems different. There's that thin veneer of anonymity that comes with hiding behind a stupid username, as compared with baring your name and picture (not to mention a record of whatever you're doing on Facebook) to some complete stranger.
Eh, who knows? Maybe it just comes with the territory. Like I said, I don't really understand the social networking thing. Just another one of those little things helping me feel more isolated, I suppose.
Requisite hunt update: the team is close to its limits, there was angst which is hopefully mostly resolved, and we'll know where we're hunting from in a couple of weeks. It seems like it's going to work out.
lyrics that came on just now:
that which doesn't kill me strengthens me
repeated end-to-endlessly
if i'm so goddamned strong now
how come i feel so lonely?
-- Mary Prankster, "Takes His Place"
It's now past 4. Less rambling, more cleaning and packing. Off I go.