it’s a melody played in a penny arcade

[johnnyfavorite]

I tend to write here infrequently, about very specific things or events that require a fair amount of thought to process. I don’t do the usual “this is what’s happening in my life” entries, because that is the sort of thing I tell to Steph, and then my need for human contact is sated. But in honor of hohum’s return to the livejournalnets, I’m going to

Comments

[skeletaltime]

I'm sorry now that I wasn't more empathetic toward your situation in DC. I'm not sure if it came off to you this way often or not, but initially, I couldn't tell how much of a jerk that guy was because I wasn't sure if it was really him being such a douche, or if it was you being finicky and sensitive. Based on what you've said, it really does sound like it was a bad situation, little comfort zone or not.

I guess I am pretty knowledgeable on what you do and don't like - if one of those lame pub trivia night games were titled "Shit Allen Likes and That Which Irritates Him," I would take first place.

You'll bounce back. I have no idea how one would go about enlarging their comfort zone though, if that's even what you want to do.

[johnnyfavorite]

i think the best (only?) thing you could have done was play devil's advocate. i had a lease in d.c. i couldn't walk away from, and i had to give myself time to see if i could stand it or not.

as i've said before, i think i made the best decision i could at every point in the process, given the information i had at the time. except maybe for the meta-decision that it's okay to go work for yet another mediocre company. maybe that's just not tenable over the long haul.

[agmsmith]

Just the opposite here, pretty good job with mediocre pay (compared to other hi-tech jobs in town, but decent enough pay for me). Having fun with Kinect and Move this time of year. Though understandably my employers can't do much money-wise with the Canadian dollar rising and our clients paying in $US.

[johnnyfavorite]

yeah, you've been pretty fortunate that way, haven't you? i'd take decent work over decent pay too, no doubt about it. but i also need decent weather. (heh!)

i don't generally pay attention to microsoft, but the kinect seems kind of interesting, due to its hacking potential. i saw on news.ycombinator.com that somebody finished a proof-of-concept open-source driver for it three hours after it was available to the public.

here's an interesting tidbit you might appreciate. history tends to credit four guys as the progenitors of the xbox project within microsoft. one of them was a guy i knew when i was in my 20s and he was in his teens, when we both lived in wichita, ks. i didn't stay friends with him, because i thought he was kind of a phony. his career choices post-microsoft make me think he still is.

[agmsmith]

That open source stuff is kind of weird because Kinect has authentication but it's there to ensure that the Xbox rejects clones of the Kinect hardware, not that Kinect rejects connections to non-Xbox systems. Now would be a good time to snap up some Kinect hardware before that hole is closed.

Well, starting the Xbox project does require more than technical skills at Microsoft - you need to push the idea too to their leadership. Maybe your friend was good at that. Or just good at surfing behind the bigger fish.

[johnnyfavorite]

if microsoft was truly caught flat-footed on this, it seems awfully short-sighted of them. the ongoing fight to jailbreak the iphone has to be several orders of magnitude more work than this. they thought they would somehow escape unhacked?

after microsoft and the xbox project, my former friend went on to be ceo of the company that was supposedly working on the phantom gaming console. remember that one? how about 'biggest piece of vaporware since duke nukem forever,' ringing any bells now? heh!

[hohum]

-honored-

My dream is to structure my life around a job. But a damn good one that means a lot. Think you can find that-- is that good-sounding to you at all? It hurts me to know you're struggling when you helped me out so much a few years ago. I'm still working towards the conclusion of paying-it-forward. I hope your current situation rights itself soon.

[johnnyfavorite]

you have a lot of strength. i'm sure you'll have no problem finding an employer who will love nothing better than sucking up every ounce of it that you're willing to give them. heh!

i didn't do all that much for you. i wish you had let me do more. i was rummaging through your old entries a couple of weeks ago. i had completely forgotten that you were at one point living in your car. that was really worrying me at the time. could have ended badly.

i don't feel like i'm struggling. i just had crappy role models, so i'm about 25 years late getting stuff sorted out in my life. i managed to trash all previous major relationships, or prevented them from happening in the first place, so i don't have much to build on. steph is the first and only valuable relationship that i've been able to maintain. that's a good sign, though. if i can do it once, i can do it again.

[hohum]

Ha, I'm sure. Though, there is the dream of being my own boss, too...

You did -a lot-. I didn't know I wrote about living in my car on here... Yeah, a lot of things in my life could have ended badly. I luck out a lot!

Having at least one solid friendship really takes the edge off shitty times, I think.