levork.org

The sun came out yesterday in the very late afternoon, a relatively rare occurrence in the last couple of weeks. As a result the apartment was bathed in golden colours I don’t see that often, a bit of which I’ve tried to capture here:

I can’t believe it’s going to cost me over $400 to fly back to Vancouver for the holidays. My fiscal management these last few months has been shot to hell. I’ve been trying to cut back this month since besides the usual Christmas shopping, I’d spent a little too much on personal frivolous items last month. One of those things was an iPod, although at least the significant Pixar employee discount helped justify it somewhat. It is however the coolest little gadget – Apple just did things right, except that 5 gigs is only big enough for maybe a quarter or a third of my current CD collection.

Okay, so I’m whining about my cushy life. The guilt has already taken hold: I’ve already made out a check for the Alameda Food Bank for Santa’s elves to pick up at work on Thursday.

I was in the Seattle office last week, Monday to Wednesday. That was the first time I’d taken a plane since 09/11, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, security check wise. And sure enough, true to form, I was given the full treatment: my check in bag was ransacked by the ticket agent, I got throughly patted down and wanded when the buttons of my jeans set off the metal detector, and my carry on bag was searched and I was patted down and wanded again just prior to boarding the plane. And this happened on the way out and on the way back.

What really annoyed me was that during the one hour line up prior to the metal detector at Oakland, I was keeping pace with a guy who was dressed in what looked like a thick gray burlap blanket. Covering his head, draping down to the knees of his bare legs, ending in sandals. Indoors. And he didn’t get hassled. Though I didn’t feel like pointing this out when I got to the metal detector and saw the National Guardsmen standing there, fingering assault rifles (yes, fingering! index digits on the trigger! what happens if they sneeze?). Having never clearly seen anyone with a large gun before in my life (being held up doesn’t count – being on the muzzle end isn’t exactly a clear view), I was intimidated and kept my mouth shut. Which I guess is pretty much the entire idea.

The ticket agent on the way back at least had the decency to tell me as soon as I checked in that I had been randomly selected for additional security checks and told me what to expect. But let’s inject some statistics here: the flights were on 737-300s, which seat between 120-150 passengers, they were about two-thirds full both ways, and it looked like three people qualified for “special treatment” on the way out and maybe ten on the way back. Which basically works out to around a 1 in 200 chance that it was pure random luck I had been selected like this, both times. Not bloody likely.

So, I guess I fit some sort of profile. My mom (who mildly disapproves of the look) said I should trim the goatee for a start. David on the other hand says I look like a Uzbekistani warlord and no amount of facial hair removal will help. I think it’s the Canadian passport. Damn those quiet, unassuming Canadians. You just can’t trust them.

On to much more earth shattering matters: the visit to the Seattle offices was good, and one immediate result is that before the end of the year I’ll need to decide whether I want to take up a pure engineering position based out of the Seattle office. And, barring some sort of apocalyptic event before then, I think I’m going to take it. I don’t think I should be elaborating on some of the particular reasons why or what exactly I’ll be working on (well, RenderMan, obviously), but suffice to say: I’m not particularly tied down to the Bay Area, I think I’ll be happier in the new work environment, I’ll be closer to Vancouver, and it’ll be pretty exciting work. And I think those are reasons enough.

There are some things I get, even it takes me the better part of a weekend – like in the case of a certain misguided design for a work project involving doubly linked lists, best left forgotten.

And there are other things I don’t – like random acts of unprovoked, petty violence. Around 7:30 yesterday I was biking home from the Ironworks, and when I got to the very, very dark block on Hollis, between 59th and Powell, I saw a couple of teenagers walking towards me. Maybe a pair of friends, walking home from another friend’s house, laughing and talking – harmless, right? Well, as I passed by, one of them turned and quickly threw an orange at me, quite effectively splattering my backpack with juicy bits of citrus goodness.

It didn’t distract at all (I guess I was prepared for trouble as I was speeding by), and there wasn’t a moving car around so I wasn’t in any real danger even if I fell off, but nonetheless the event bothered me for the rest of the evening. As I’ve discovered before, random incivility disturbs me to no end – and this was no exception. I completely cannot fathom the mentality of those who would, unprovoked, randomly pelt strangers with fruit. And yet: for a couple of blocks after the fact, I shamefully fantasized about doubling back and mowing them down with the imaginary yet deadly scythes attached to the wheels of my bike. Or just driving them before me in terror as they fled from the steel tip of an equally imaginary lance.

Sometimes I wonder humans ever evolved past the point of using bones to bash each other’s skulls out. Then, I wonder whether we’ve even gotten that far. Then I wonder whether I have. After that I just want to curl up in a ball, sit in the corner, and rock back and forth, muttering to myself.

When I checked the status of my new Bank of America credit card application yesterday, I discovered that not only was I accepted, they upgraded the card type – my total credit limit is now nine times higher. I found myself chuckling gleefully over this for a while. Well, maybe smiling. Or at least, smirking.

In defense of my capitalistic fervor: it’s taken me nearly three years of having to build a credit history from scratch (that’s right aliens, your good Canadian credit means squat when you move here!) to get that little piece of plastic. I was finally allowed to move off a secured card earlier this year, but the limit was still low, and I’ve been getting pretty near it for the last few months. It’s not like I have that sort of money to blow (since I don’t ever carry a balance), but for those largish purchases where I need to put it on a card, I find it humiliating dragging Mom down here and out to the store and making her charge things for me. Like, say, large pieces of furniture. Or computer parts.

Work: still lots of code, code, and more code. As I’ll have invested quite some time in it, I can settle for being proud of the next software release. Maybe. I’ll be going up to Seattle at the end of the month, guess I’ll still have time to think about it before then.

I must be the only one who finds the proposal to rename my birth province “Newfoundland and Labrador” ridiculous.

It’s not like anyone calls BC “The Province of British Columbia and Vancouver Island.” Besides, who the hell lives in Labrador?

I’ve still been somewhat in crunch mode for software release over the last week. This is not all bad, because most of the work been interesting, but it also meant I was at the office Saturday and was pretty busy all of last week. So it’ll be just two observations today, both related to climbing. And for those of you sick of my enthusiasm about climbing, note that the other thing I’ve been enthustiastic about recently has been multivariate calculus, so I could be writing about that instead. (I mean, I finally get it! It only took me seven bloody years! I was going through the drudgery from that damned blue Adams book this weekend – Thompson and UBC classmates will undoubtably know exactly which cursed series of tomes I’m talking about – and it finally gelled! So I had no excuse for flunking out of honours math! Okay, I’ll shut up now.)

So, first observation: in some ways, I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was. I rigged up a temporary chin up bar yesterday and was astonished to find myself being able to do over twenty consecutive pull ups. The last time I remember attempting a pull up, I was seventeen, I was in a gym at the Rideau Centre in Ottawa, and I couldn’t do a single one. It’s kind of heartening to find out I must be doing something right.

Second observation: when it comes to climbing, strength alone isn’t enough. I went climbing last Monday and Wednesday and was pretty abysmal. Basically I was trying to power my way up the wall with my arms, and this is really not a good thing if you want to last more than two climbs. Yesterday, after getting a haircut in Berkeley, I picked up a book at Borders (The Complete Rock Climber, Malcolm Creasey), and learned a few techniques which I applied at the wall today which made an enormous difference – scaled three 5.7′s in a row without breaking a sweat, had no problems getting through the night. That was pretty cool.

I think I’m finally over the black pit of depression that was Sunday. More on that some other time though – lot of unresolved issues I still need to think and work through.

And the next time I’m in a complete and utter funk I will remember the following:

• Mindless entertainment helps drain away negative emotions. Especially when said entertainment involves demonspawn wielding a pair of handguns and a very big sword.
• Focused activity is great for avoiding being alone with your thoughts – try looking for strange bugs in code, or go climbing.
• When all else fails, add a jolt of pure terror to shock the system. Like the one that happens when there’s a red light at the major intersection up ahead, and you realise that due to overextertion during climbing, you can’t clench your hands far enough to pull the brakes on your bike.

It happened again last night. I’ve been having this recurring dream where I spend an inordinate amount of time and effort lying or sitting still and trying to levitate through sheer will alone – and failing miserably. The pathetic part is that I’m trying so hard because I *think* I’ve done it before, and I’m failing just because I’ve forgotten some key meditation trick or something.

I couldn’t be normal and actually dream that I have superpowers. Oh no. Instead, I dream that I’m sadly deluded into thinking I have superpowers.

Ernie Coombs – better known as Mr. Dressup – died today.

Now I’m really depressed.