| Move coming soon |
[Sep. 22nd, 2006|12:10 pm] |
eddiehawkins.livejournal.com
In honor of my favorite Hartwick soccer player of all time. Or in honor of the Coalition for Arkansas' Future. I forget which.
New posts, such as they are, will go there; this will probably be shut down in a week or two. |
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| redirect? |
[Sep. 22nd, 2006|10:09 am] |
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Although I am not strictly concerned with my LJ being stumbled upon by someone who is a subject of one of my posts, maybe I should be. Certainly there's no real benefit to having my LJ username be my name. So I am considering changing to something else. This may happen soon, in which case I'll post a notification here and then close this down in a couple weeks. |
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| zzz |
[Sep. 21st, 2006|01:15 pm] |
A couple weeks later:
I've left Become and am a couple days into my training at Guidewire. The training is pretty tedious thus far, mostly because it's tuned toward people without significant tech skills. I'm the first person from my team to go through this training and it's certainly useful but it's moving really slowly. The people in my class are impressively multicultural -- there are two people from our England office, one from the Australia office, and three Russians who consult for Deloitte & Touche and I think are going back to help set up a new client. (The Irish guy's name is pronounced Owen and spelled "Eoghan". He is the other guy who has a programming background and the two of us tend to get pretty far ahead of the class.) Two of the Russians are distractingly cute. Not very good at English though. There's also this old Jewish guy who's a tech writer and is impressively cranky/semicompetent. He annoys me. Ha, he also just realized that he has a really gimpy company-issued laptop compared to the other permanent employees and he is complaining. He actually said "Why is mine so small?" and I successfully resisted answering but many of us giggled. He's very grumpy about the better treatment that the engineering department gets. The Irish guy and I were trying to reason with him. I fear this guy is not long for this company.
In marginally related news, I am technically in the marketing department and the idea of having to dress "business casual" is going to get annoying soon.
(I'm in training right now but the HR people are in teaching all of the foreigners/consultants how to fill out timesheets, so I am officially not paying attention.)
A final story from Become: on my last day, I was walking out of the office to go play basketball and the marketing person saw me on the way out. She asked if this was my last day and what kind of job I was going to. I told her about this demo stuff and what I think I'm going to be doing, and her response was: "Are you good at that?" What on earth is the proper response to that?
Dudley is still really whiny. I thought it was due to underfeeding him but that is not appearing to be the case. My new theory is that he misses having someone to play with and so I am chasing him around and dangling strings more often. He seems amused by it, I think. I am still considering getting another cat but the luxury of non-cat-hair-encrusted clothes and less frequent catbox cleaning is going to be hard to give up.
I played in a 105-person poker tournament on Saturday and placed 19th for a 25% profit. Huzzah. I got pretty bad cards overall (no pairs higher than 7s, no AK or AQ) but I did a lot of blind stealing and it kept me alive for a while.
I've had a couple of dates lately with a new girl that I met via Craigslist. She is impressively smart (Yale undergrad, Cal physics Ph.D.) and works as a management consultant. She is about my age and Jewish although not excessively so. She works out a ton. This sounds like it should be pretty good, right?
The first date was good. We had dinner at a pretty good Mexican place -- I felt vaguely obligated to order a margarita after she did and determined that watermelon margaritas with a lot of melon pulp aren't very good. I asked some questions about her job and we talked about that a lot -- mostly about an annoying coworker she has and the difficulty she was having in convincing people that a potential employee wasn't a good hire. It was vaguely amusing. We also talked about the difficulty in explaining opportunity costs to our fathers. We almost went to a movie but nothing of interest was showing when we got to the theater (she's not much for action movies) so we got ice cream. We went to the ice cream place in the Prius and had a discussion of the economic impact/implications of the carpool lane. Overall I liked talking to her but I couldn't get her to tell me about her other interests if they exist. She also wasn't real interested in physical contact as far as I could tell but I didn't press that real hard.
The second date was on a Tuesday. She specifically wanted to go somewhere north of her office (so on her way home) and near the highway. I suggested a couple places that she wasn't real impressed with. Eventually I mentally conceded and suggested a sushi place which she was excited about. I had many a squidgy fish lump. We talked about her job a lot -- mostly about an annoying coworker she has. I asked her what she did this weekend and she said she worked out and went to the conservatory of flowers, which she didn't have much to say about. She eventually asked me about my weekend and I told her I had dim sum with some friends, played in a poker tournament, went for a walk, and watched the Bears. Her response: "Who?"
I explained who the Bears are and asked if she doesn't like sports, and she confirmed that and asked why I like sports given how much the players and teams move around. I thought about it a bit and said that I'd just been brought up that way and now I didn't really have a choice. Shrug. We talked some about running/walking and some other random stuff.
After spending about five hours with her, either she has no interests other than work and exercise or she's really embarrassed of them. On the other hand, she cared enough to post an ad on CL. Shrug. I'm not super-enthused to see her again but it may happen.
oh, we had our group trip to Vegas the other weekend. It was fun although less so than previous years -- some of the people I liked didn't attend this year and some of the new people are very young and primarily interested in getting drunk. It was still fun spending time with the people I did want to see, but the divide is getting more obvious.
This Irish guy amuses me greatly. |
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| It may be time to go |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|10:41 am] |
I answer the customer feedback email here. I got this request from Tammy:
Comment: I want to know do you have a some coupon that you can send me on lyson spray. here is my addresses (deleted) chicago ill 60617.I need some kind of coupon or any sample to send me to.thank you tammy s
Which is in principle fine, but she wrote in about a month ago and asked for dog treat samples, and I explained that we're not really in that business. She doesn't seem to have gotten the message though. I may have been less polite than I should have, but the inspiration of the telemarketing script was strong. (I copied my response to the dog treat request as a starting point, of course.)
Hi, Tammy! Thanks for using Become.com.
Become.com is a search engine. We take shopping data from merchants that have signed up with us and make it easier to search and do comparison shopping. However, we don't actually carry any of these products ourselves. So we don't have any dog treats lysol spray or dog treat lysol spray coupons around the office. We have some good turkey jerky monitor cleaning spray but the programmers tend to eat use it before I get any, much less saving some for my pets pets.
Regards,
Mike |
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| rollercoaster |
[Aug. 20th, 2006|11:52 pm] |
so. um.
First off, thank you to everyone who sent me notes of support. I really ought to respond to them individually and I will but I haven't wanted to yet. But I can tell they have all been heartfelt and they were greatly appreciated.
I don't find myself being as depressed as I thought I would be. At the same time, though, I am not nearly as happy around the house as I used to be. In my overly analytical way, I would say that my happiness at home used to range from about a 40 to a 90, and now it's more like a 35 to 70. I haven't felt the "omg crippling pain" when I turn off the shower and she's not waiting for me, but now it's just sort of enh instead of actually making me happy.
More than once, when I've gone to bed, I have thought I heard her running in and jumping onto my nightstand like she used to. I'm sure it's just the wind playing with the blinds or something but it's weird. And whenever I'm out driving and I see an animal hospital I get this flash of watching the nurse put the needle into her leg, which is highly unpleasant.
Dudley is really whiny and attention-craving now. And when I go to bed he insists on crawling up onto my chest and stretching out his forelegs a little at a time until they are sticking over the edge of the blanket and he can claw me in the chin or lower lip. I am getting tired of it. He sits around the house looking at me and meowing and I can't figure out anything that makes him stop other than picking him up and petting him but even that doesn't last all that long. I'm not sure what to do about him. (I finally got around to weighing him; he weighs 17 points. That seems like a lot.)
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It's been a busy week and a half in other ways. Dad came into town Friday and Saturday to be social and to help me buy a car. Friday we went to a Honda dealer and found a reasonably priced Accord, which is not the most exciting car ever and I said as much. Our salesman had only been at the job for six weeks and was not very well informed on the subject of financing, so this took longer than it had to. Dad pointed out that if we were going to consider leasing instead of buying, we could probably afford something much nicer than we'd been planning (the Accord was going to be $4k down and $100/month, which really doesn't seem like very much at all.) So I did a bit more research that night, in which I learned almost nothing, and then we went out Saturday.
The first Toyota dealership we got a salesman who had been working four weeks. He showed us a bunch of uninteresting cars and then I asked about Priuses. They are still expensive and they didn't have any used ones with reasonable mileage totals on the lot. I could get a new one delivered within three weeks or so if I wasn't picky about color/options but it would probably be too late to get a carpool sticker and it seemed kind of pointless without one, so we moved on, but we took their pricing sheet with us.
Hopkins Honda...oh boy. Our salesman had three weeks of experience. They had a 2006 Civic Hybrid and a 2005 Prius, both with 13000 miles. The Prius already had the carpool stickers. Neither car had a price posted, and this guy was absolutely completely convinced that he couldn't tell us the price until we took it for a test drive. Dad was under time pressure and I didn't want to deal with taking a test drive and explaining to him that we're not doing it and we want to buy it took a ridiculous length of time. Finally he passed us to another salesman who said it was $28k. This is a little high for a used Prius but not super high. I asked about the options and was told that it had the navigation package, CD changer, etc. I hadn't seen the CD changer so the rookie salesman and I went out to look at the car more closely.
Apparently they assumed that since the car had a data screen that it had the navigation package. It did not, nor the CD changer. Dad informed the semi-competent salesman that it didn't have the option package they thought, a new one would cost us about $25.5k, and how much did they want to price this at now? The guy went to the finance office, came back, and said they couldn't give us a price. Dad and I looked at each other. We tried to get him to admit that they did in fact have a price but he wouldn't budge, so we left. Very odd.
While we were at the next lot Hopkins called back and said they had in fact come up with a number. Dad argued them down a little ways and got more for my trade-in than was probably reasonable, and I got my car.
Mixed in with the auto manual, new license plate sticker, etc. was the documentation from their buying the car from the previous owner, which had his name, address, and how much he got for it. Also, they have a bulletin board next to the finance office (but still in the showroom where customers can go) that lists the price they paid for all the used cars on the lot. Either they're running quite the semi-bluff or they are real dumb.
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Sunday, Alec and I and two other people went to see Bill Maher in concert at the Mountain Winery. We had first-row seats. Sitting next to Alec was an impeccably-dressed couple. The woman had obvious surgical enhancements and a massive diamond ring, and the guy had a perfectly tailored suit and wore sunglasses even though the concert was outdoors at night. About halfway through the guy pulled out a copy of this book, which he apparently thought was very important for Bill to read. He tossed the book onto the stage, but it landed in a shadow while Bill wasn't looking. Eventually the guy got up, collected the book, and stood up and threw it farther onto the stage while Bill was facing us. Bill was...unimpressed with the distraction.
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Tuesday I had a second round interview at Guidewire, an insurance software firm that Jason G works at. I was there from 8:30 to 11:30 and then got a call at 6 from someone who hadn't been around. They didn't ask any technical questions, apparently because my interview with the VP of engineering on the last visit went well enough, and so all the questions were these touchy-feely things about how I work with people and my teaching skills and some other stuff. It seemed really easy.
Wednesday morning they offered me the job. They were apparently concerned enough that I might not take it that when I told the guy that I'd call him back to discuss the offer at lunch, he thought I was blowing him off to get a counteroffer from my current workplace and asked Jason to make sure I signed with them. Go fig. (My current workplace took a couple days to decide that they couldn't compete with the offer I got and, well, bye.)
I am going to be a "Demonstration Solutions Engineer" or something like that. As far as I can tell, the engineering department comes up with new features and we figure out how to write applications to make the features look cool so our sales staff can sell them. It's an engineering-ish job in the marketing department that works with sales and product management; I interviewed with one guy who went from this job (I think, maybe he had the similar job in sales, I forget) to a PM position, so that's a good sign. This also has more normal work hours, allows telecommuting, and is a 136% raise by hourly rate, so...overall I am pleased about this. I start on September 18 with a three-week training program.
Some people went to dinner with me to celebrate and I had a cosmo and two glasses of wine. Not enough to affect me but more than I have ever had before in one day, I think. The wine was pretty good by wine standards.
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Friday two of the girls on my team and I went to a chocolate and wine tasting thing in Los Gatos after work. We met Nat there. I had another two glasses of wine. It was not that good this time. I didn't really like the first one and kind of drank it really fast to get rid of it. (I probably should have just given it back and said "ick" or something; as it was the woman running the wine station said "oh, you chugged that one, maybe you should sip this one a little slower." I am not very cultured.) I bought a package of ginger candies as a gift for my date on Saturday. The girls were entertaining. I will miss my coworkers.
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The date Saturday didn't happen. She sent me an email around 2:30 with the following contents:
"Would you mind terribly if we take a raincheck? I haven't been feeling so hot since yesterday morning and should probably stay put tonight.
I don't have your number to call, so I hope you get this email soon. Lemme know."
I responded with my phone number and said that was fine but I might eat her candy. She sent another email today asking how the candy was and that she was still kind of sick. I am not highly concerned by all this.
Also I finally dropped a set of tennis to Alec. We played two sets without a water break and by the end he was actually hitting well. It was a good sign. I have kind of learned to serve overhand too, which is fun.
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I should really update this more often instead of trying to remember everything. Anyway. New car, new job, emptier apartment. Those are the highlights. |
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[Aug. 10th, 2006|12:39 am] |
My alarm went off at 7 this morning. I mostly woke up, but then Pants jumped onto my bedside table and then onto the bed next to my pillow. I rubbed her back for a bit, then looked at her, and she looked back at me and did her little "i'm going to hit you in the nose but not hard, so I'm going to miss the first few times to make sure I don't go too far" thing, and I got up. I took my shower, she waited outside, I petted her again, put my robe on, walked to the bedroom, picked her up, and held her like I always do. She purred and kneaded my robe like usual. I got dressed, sat down at the computer briefly, and collected my things. Sometime around here she decided that she had to go hide under the bed. I have no idea what tipped her off that she was going for a ride, but something did. I collected her and got her into her travel bag after a few tries and off we went.
In my attempts to collect my normal possessions before I left the house, I managed to take with me: my keys, my phone, and two pairs of sunglasses. Not my money or other cards though.
I kept my hand in the bag the whole ride there. She shivered like she usually does in the car and eventually went to sleep, I think.
Suzy was waiting for me when I got there. We went in and waited for the technician to get us. I showed Suzy the lump on Pants's head. I let the kitten out and she hid behind me on the chair.
Eventually the nurse came for us and led us past a bunch of barking dogs to another room. We waited for a technician, and small cat hid behind Suzy.
The technician showed up and explained that she would inject an overdose of anesthetic into Pants's back leg and her brain would die first, and that it might take up to a minute or a minute and a half, and she wouldn't close her eyes, and she might go to the bathroom and she might have muscle spasms and did I want to stay for this? I started crying and managed to get out that it seemed cowardly to leave now and that I would stay but if she was going to void her bowels could I have a towel? They got me one (and Suzy had brought some tissues for me), and I collected myself. About this time Dave showed up.
I held small cat in my lap and rubbed her small, lumpy, misshapen head while the technician found the vein, put the needle in, and pushed. Pants never made a sound. She died almost instantly, I think. Less than fifteen seconds, and none of the other stuff. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised but I had no idea that she'd died; the technician was listening with a stethoscope and told me. She picked up Pants and I cried again and Pants went away. Dave and Suzy patted me on the back until I got collected and we went out the side door.
Dave offered to get breakfast with me but I wanted to get my day started. I drove to work. On the way there I had a small panic moment when I realized that I had absolutely no idea where I was or how I had gotten there, and I had to find a street sign to find out that I was on Central between Rengstorff and Shoreline. It was really confusing.
I got to work and got basically nothing done all day, although I managed to avoid breaking down while I was in the office. I did take a few walks though, and I left early because I was obviously not being productive. I had dinner with Alec and Dan and played a game and got home around 11. Dudley was happy to see me, mostly because I fed him and let him go back to sleep on my office chair. Other than while writing this I have been mostly OK so far, but I have been trying to keep busy. I dunno how going to bed is going to be, or waking up tomorrow and showering.
The Futurama episode tonight was the one where Bender "kills" Leela's pet and then gets an empathy chip so he'll feel bad about her loss. It wasn't all that funny.
I've never really had to face mortality before. The only beings who have been even marginally close to me and died during my life (when I was old enough to understand) have been my maternal grandparents and my dog, but I hadn't seen any of them much in the five years before they died, so it was kind of distant. It really is amazing how little difference there is between a living, breathing cat and a dead one, at least right at the time. I wouldn't have believed she was dead except that the nurse gathered her up and she just sort of flopped.
Other things I should have said in the last post:
Pants and Dudley used to get along really well. They would groom each other and sleep curled up with each other or lying parallel with their paws across each others' bodies. When I brought Pants back from the oncologist, Dudley hissed at her, and after that they didn't seem to be quite as social. I only saw them together once in the next month or so.
When I was eating cereal and she wanted milk, she would walk over on the table and from as far away as she could, she'd dip her paw into the milk and lick it off, then look at me as if to say "you didn't stop me from doing that, so it's okay if I get more, right?" If I didn't move, she'd walk over and lap up the milk like normal; otherwise she'd wait until I was done and put the bowl on the ground.
I've had these black thoughts about Dudley lately, about how I'm really not looking forward to having him around and how I wouldn't have cared nearly so much if it was him and such. He's not really going anywhere, but it makes me feel guilty. He's just such a...stereotypical cat, the kind whose interactions with me are limited to his wanting something, petting or food or water or access to my chair mostly. Also he sucks at the shoestring game.
I haven't decided if I'm going to get another cat soon. I expect I will eventually.
I hate ending these posts. I know there's so much I haven't said and even more that I'm forgetting right now. I don't know why it's so important to write this, but I know it is.
Dudley is meowing a lot. I don't know if this is just him demanding attention and me noticing more than I did before or if he's actually missing small cat. |
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| Pants (1996-2006) |
[Aug. 8th, 2006|09:40 pm] |
When I was 23, my future spread out before me in a completely different shape. I had a girlfriend who had lived with me for a while already and we were getting a new apartment, just the two of us. She worked at Oracle and I was about to start a job running a game store just down the street from the new place. I was pretty happy.
When we picked the new apartment, one reason we got the place we did was that it allowed cats, and Laura really wanted a cat. She had had them growing up, but I always had a dog. It's a lot harder to find apartments that allow dogs, and I was willing to consider a cat although I didn't think much of them at the time.
Laura found out that the Petco at Woodside and El Camino in Redwood City had some cats that had been placed there by a local humane society for adoption, and we went over to look at them. She was entranced by this big-for-his-age black and white cat that seemed really friendly, poking his nose into her purse and such, and as I wasn't really involved in the process this cat sounded as good as any. We were told to come back on a particular day at closing time when the lady from the humane society would be there and would fill out the paperwork for us.
We showed up Sunday evening and met Mary at the store. To give the cats some exercise, they let them all out of the cages once the store was closed, and they spilled out and started running around and exploring. Laura had found Dudley, picked him up, and set him on the counter while she signed some papers and talked about vaccinations and such. For lack of anything better to do, I watched the other cats.
One clever cat had gotten a toy down from the shelf and carried it a little ways before dropping it and batting at it a little. I watched with mild amusement. Suddenly, a tiny little kitten -- no bigger than my two hands put together -- ran down the aisle, jumped over the bigger cat, stole the toy, and ran off. She was tiny and light brown with dark brown stripes all over, on her legs and around her body and two little stripes between her eyes. She was so happy to have found this toy and jumped around and around. I poked the toy away and she ran after it and rolled around on it. Mary looked over and saw this and started telling Laura about how maybe we should get two cats so they'd be able to keep each other company. Laura didn't know what she was getting at until she turned around and saw me playing with this little tiny kitten. We got both cats and brought them home to our new unfurnished apartment and played and played and played.
Dudley was always Laura's cat and Pants was mine. She followed me around the apartment, even into the bathroom, and she would sit on the toilet while I was in the shower and wait for the water to stop. When I opened the shower curtain, she would meow at me until I petted her head a few times, then I'd look at her and she'd meow again but look away like she really didn't want anything from me, and we did this for a minute or so until I had to get out. She slept on the computer monitor because it was nice and warm, and for a while she liked chasing the mouse cursor until she figured out she couldn't really get it. (She didn't really buy laser pointers either; Dudley would chase the red dot endlessly but small cat would watch it briefly, then come over and try to bite the pointer itself out of my hands.)
She was never much for store-bought toys. She liked shoestrings and balled-up paper, mostly shoestrings. She'd snap it out of the air with her teeth and try to carry it off, but she'd bring it back and drop it in front of me if I didn't follow her.
She liked tuna, and ham, and pastrami, and tomato sauce, and ice cream, and Coke, and macaroni and cheese, and lots of other things she probably shouldn't have had but she would steal them while I wasn't looking and then I gave up and let her have what she wanted because she was my cat and I loved her. She also loved the soft Pounce treats, which used to come in a small canister kind of like Pringles, and she figured out how to hold the can in her paws and pull the lid off with her teeth, so I had to put the cans in completely unreachable areas to keep her out of them.
She never really figured out how to mark people by rubbing up against them, so if I stuck my finger out she'd rub it a little with her cheek and then start chewing on my fingertip, not hard enough to hurt but she'd make these little chewing noises and purr.
When Laura and I broke up, we decided that the cats should stay together because they'd lived together all their life, and Laura had just gotten a new kitten from her sister and she generously let me keep these cats, a gift for which I have probably never properly thanked her.
For the last six or seven years or so I've lived alone, and I haven't had a real girlfriend in I guess about five years. I have friends, and I have good friends, but at night it was always the cats who were with me, and during the day too when I was unemployed. There were days when I didn't have enough money to feed myself, sometimes a couple days at a time, but the cats always, always had enough food, even if I had to resort to...unethical methods.
Over the last year or so she's taken to sleeping under the covers with me. She'll come to bed a couple minutes after I do and sit next to my head and meow until I lift the blanket up, and she'll crawl under and curl up next to my side and fall asleep. She often woke me up by batting at my nose or forehead, and since I wasn't willing to clip her claws I often had tiny little cuts on my nose. She was a good alarm clock though. She also hated sitting on bare skin for some reason, although if I was wearing my robe or boxers or something she'd sit there and knead away for minutes on end.
On Sunday, I was lying in bed reading the newspaper when she hopped up and sat next to my head and meowed for attention. I turned to pet her. I mentioned earlier that she had an occasional problem with drooling. She was drooling a lot, but this time it was bright, bright red. I jumped out of bed like I'd been shot, ran to get some paper towels, and cleaned her off. An hour later it was back, and that was enough for me to make an emergency vet appointment. By the time we got seen, two hours after I arrived at the vet (grr), she wasn't showing any major symptoms. The vet knew about the tumor but wasn't real informed otherwise as far as I could tell, and he wouldn't really commit to telling me what I should do, but he said that if I wanted to put her to sleep he wouldn't tell me it was the wrong thing to do, or I could take her home and spoil her a little while longer. I took her home.
The blood was back a little the next day, and it hasn't come back since, but she's begun to paw at the side of her head where the tumor is, and she sits around with her tongue out sometimes which a couple web sites have suggested is because her mouth hurts when she keeps her tongue in, and when I try to play with the string she really wants to play but she can barely open her mouth enough to bite the string, so it's sort of unsatisfying for both of us, I think. And after she eats she runs and hides under the bed like she's done something wrong, and that must mean something, right?
I'd rather end this two weeks early than a minute late, and as selfish as it feels like it is, I just can't take coming home every day and wondering if it's time to go. She still acts mostly normal, and she purrs when I hold her, and she seems to be eating, but...the time was obviously coming, and I think I've stretched this out long enough. Tomorrow, sometime around 8:30 in the morning, the little animal that for the last ten years I have loved more than anything in the world will go away.
I know intellectually that there's nothing I could really have done, even if I'd found the tumor earlier, because I wouldn't have put her through radiation therapy or chemo. And I know this is what's best for her. And I know that the ten and a half years of pure happiness were a fantastic trade for the couple weeks of pain I have now. And I know that for the last ten years, if our lives had gone differently and I had never seen her steal that toy, she might possibly have gone to a place where she would have been better cared for, or somewhere more luxurious, or maybe even possibly somewhere more fun, but I know that she could never have been more loved. And I know that I am going to be very lonely.
I can't find the one really good picture of her that I had, which is pissing me off no end, but I'm sure I'll find it another time and start bawling. If that happens, I'll post it.
I'm mostly okay now when I'm distracted by something else, but driving in the car is really bad because I don't have a stereo right now and I have nothing better to do than think. I don't know how I'm going to do tomorrow, but Dave and Suzy are going to be there and maybe that will help. I hope so.
I don't know if there's an afterlife. I've always been a little too pragmatic to think that there is, but it appears that events are making me hope that there is one. And I think about the times when I held her like a baby, right after I got out of the shower and put on my robe and I was still warm from the water, and she lay in my arms with her head tucked into my shoulder and kneading my robe and purring her very loudest, and I know people talk about going to a better place, but I want to think that this was the best place she could have been and I hope she goes somewhere where she is exactly as happy as she was right then, and I hope I find that place myself again someday.
Goodbye, baby girl. I miss you. |
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| probably not as funny as I thought; also, movie notes |
[Jul. 30th, 2006|12:45 am] |
I got a second response to my garlic festival post, from a person whose email identifies her as "Elizabeth Bennet (ha)" (although she signed it "Jen", so she actually chose that name). My response, in part:
omg the Elizabeth Bennet? I've read so much about you! Although I didn't hear that you married a Chinese gentleman. I hope that goes well for you.
I hope she remembers what she uses for an email nick, or that's going to be really confusing for her.
I am continuing to thrash Alec in tennis. He seems to have some major psychological problems in terms of being really good in practice and less good in games. Go fig.
My car is making odd noises, like a metal-rubbing kind of noise. I am not sure if this is the brake pads needing replacing or something having bent from going over a speed bump too fast. Either way, I am hoping it's not something that will cause my car to fail in a major way in the next two weeks; Dad is coming out here then and we're going to go buy a car.
In the last eight days I've seen four movies. A Scanner Darkly was interesting to watch, but very confusing if you haven't read the book already, which I hadn't. Dave explained some things after the movie, which helped, but it would have been nice to know those at the time.
Clerks 2 was about what you would expect from a non-message-having Kevin Smith movie. He's obviously capable of telling a pretty good story when he wants to, but this is more of a festival of vulgarity. Which was fine with me. I suspect everyone reading this knows whether they'd like it or not before they see it. My favorite part was the troll scene.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which I went to as part of a corporate relaxation day, was mediocre. Very predictable, occasionally funny. Uma Thurman and Anna Faris are both hot and Uma Thurman is a good actress, so it wasn't a total loss, but...enh.
Miami Vice was OK. It dragged in places, and there were a couple parts that didn't make a lot of sense, but mostly it was good. Mindless entertainment has its place.
In summary, I would not be a good movie critic. |
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| my life -- the short version |
[Jul. 27th, 2006|01:53 am] |
Small cat has adapted well to wet cat food. When she gets excited to eat she drools somewhat uncontrollably, which is amusing if kind of icky, but otherwise she seems to be doing okay. She's beginning to put on weight again. I should try playing with her more and see if she's getting interested in that.
My job is still fine. I got a second monitor at work today due to general wheel-squeaking and noting that when I did get programming assignments, the second screen would be really helpful. Now I get twice the radiation! It is nice from a work efficiency standpoint though.
I applied for a product management job at Facebook a couple months ago and never heard anything back from them. A couple days ago, they sent me a note saying thanks for applying for their senior engineering position and they'd like to schedule a phone interview. I did that and it seemed to go okay. No idea when I'll hear back though. It's flattering to have a company show (somewhat) unsolicited interest in me -- it's been a while. I'm happy to have the safety net of already having a job during these proceedings though.
Nat got me on the invite list for testing a game that's happening soon (http://www.gotohogwarts.com). They're charging $225 a head to do it. I thought this was pretty astounding, but having gone through playtesting...I don't know if you'll really get $225 worth of entertainment out of your day and a half of gaming, but I know they aren't making an obscene profit off it. I saw some amazing technology there. I probably shouldn't talk about it here in case someone playing stumbles across the blog and has it spoiled, but if you're interested I can tell you about some of the stuff in email. It was really, really, really impressive.
My car is making a different suspicious noise now. I really need to get it replaced. I've just had no energy lately. It's way too hot out, among other things. I have a nice tan/sunburn going though.
Somehow during the cat emergency, my body decided to change its priorities, and my eyes magically fixed their light sensitivity issues. I haven't had any trouble with them for the last couple weeks. (I have had some serious headaches though. Ben has recommended an acupressure guy who I may go see sometime soon; apparently I can get partial reimbursement from my medical insurance.)
The Craigslist ad has borne a bit of fruit already. I'm trying to decide if it's worth reposting with a picture just as a study of how much more often ads with pictures get clicked on. The one response I've gotten so far has been quite promising though. 28 years old, cute, Stanford PhD, going to cooking school. Very appealing in a sort of "um, I may have talked a better game than I have" kind of way. Go fig. She does not want to go to the garlic festival though.
My basketball game has come back to some extent. I'm happy that I can make uncontested fifteen-footers again and I don't automatically lose the ball if I try to dribble between my legs. I have been crushing Alec at tennis also, although I expect that to stop any day now. |
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| book meme |
[Jul. 27th, 2006|01:32 am] |
Apparently it's what the cool people, or at least the cool people whose blogs I read, are doing.
The first line(s) of some of my favorite books, in alphabetical order by author's last name:
1) ______ wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.
2) These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. ______.
3) ______ ______, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.
4) The year that ______ was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.
5) I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
6) There was once a boy named ______ who didn't know what to do with himself -- not just sometimes, but always.
7) The train sat rigid as a steel bar, poised in midair above its magnetic monorail track, disgorging passengers into Dallas Station.
8) From the telephone a man's accentless voice said, "Here's a list: Chaucer...Malory..."
9) That sunny September day was full of surprises. The first one came when, after my swift realization that the sedan was still right side up and the windshield and windows intact, I switched off the ignition and turned to look at the back seat.
10) It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton.
(Note that there are a handful of books that would be on here if other people hadn't already used them on their lists, making them less fun -- Ender's Game and Snow Crash, among others.)
(Also note that my taste in books is possibly less good than some other peoples', and I am not limiting this to particular genres. I've removed character names that might be overly identifiable, but I don't see any way to make #10 less recognizable.) |
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| "Pants" |
[Jul. 16th, 2006|10:06 pm] |
She seems to be a big fan of the Science Diet wet cat food. I think she's regaining a little energy; she played once or twice today, although briefly. We'll see what happens after a couple more days. I also discovered that I underfed them Friday and Saturday; I made the apparently foolish assumption that the cans of cat food given to me by the vet were the appropriate size to feed them, but when I looked later I discovered that they said "give a 10 lb. cat 2 1/2 to 3 cans per day". Small cat is only seven pounds, but Dudley is pretty big and frankly probably stole some of her food. I bought some full-size cans at Petco today, and even they say "give a 10 lb. cat 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cans per day", which seems like an odd sizing decision. Go fig.
My blog entry from earlier this weekend is already the third highest entry on Google for the doctor's name. Go fig. In other news, the other doctors there were possibly less cute than I remembered; I may have been a bit irrational that day.
I am concerned that the doctor told me that I should watch for small cat's eye watering, which might be an indication that the tumor had grown large enough to put pressure on her eye and hurt her, and her eye was watering yesterday. But it seems like there's no way that it could have grown so much in one day to make that big a difference, and presumably if the x-ray showed that this was imminent the doctor would have said something. I'll ask her tomorrow when she calls.
Her name: During the first season of the Conan O'Brien show, when I was in college and the show had some...occasional quality issues...there was a skit where a guy dressed in a Lone Ranger mask and a cape leaped on stage and declared that he was the Masked Nicknamer. I believe he called Conan "Chief" because of his resemblance to an Indian chief, and I know he called Andy "Pants" because he dressed up the show like a fine pair of pants. Somehow that stuck with me and when we bought our cats a year or two later, she got the name.
(I will save the other good story, of how I actually got her, for another time.) |
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| cat conclusion |
[Jul. 14th, 2006|11:39 pm] |
Small cat had a long and unpleasant day of tests. Quick summary (the doctor's letter is below if you're curious): She has bone cancer. It has caused her jaw to fuse on one side. She's still able to open her mouth a little bit, enough to eat. They can't remove the tumor surgically; they could do chemo or radiation therapy but since she can't open her mouth enough for an air tube she'd need a tracheotomy. So that's out. However, she's basically healthy except for this big bone mass; the tumor hasn't spread to her chest or liver or brain or anything. If she starts behaving oddly or if the tumor gets so much bigger that her eye is being pushed on, that will probably be the time to end it. But for now she is basically a happy cat and will continue for a while. I'm going to switch her to soft food and buy an infant scale so I can see if she's losing weight.
I didn't ask if this would have been different if I'd caught it earlier; I noticed a while back that she lost some fur on this side but I thought it was just from scuffling with Dudley. Both doctors agreed that the tumor isn't real obvious unless you're looking for facial symmetry (and note that the dentist never saw it at all). I forgot to ask if she still needs her teeth out. I'll ask Monday.
This is basically the best news I could reasonably have expected at that point, so I will just be thankful for the extra time I will have with her.
The doctor and various nurses were all quite amused to hear the story of how she got her name. All six doctors at this place are female and most of them are cute, including the one I had. I did gut it up and ask her to dinner but she said she had a boyfriend, and she answered fast enough that I don't think she was lying.
I went to a party tonight with Alec and wore the red pants. More about that on Sunday perhaps; I have a long weekend of de-stressing ahead of me. Tennis and golf tomorrow, Giants game on Sunday.
-----
Friday, July 14, 2006
Dr. Kerri Shandro
Adobe Animal Hospital (Los Altos)
Dear Dr. Shandro:
Thank you for the referral of “Pants” Lewis, a 10 year female DSH, who presented on Friday, July 14, 2006 for evaluation of a bony periorbital mass.
History: This extensive bony skull mass was discovered during physical
examination yesterday. Pants was presented to Dr Shandro for a 1-2 week history of difficulty eating. She is able to drink effectively. She is otherwise acting normally and is an indoor otherwise healthy cat.
Physical examination
Temp: 210 Pulse: 210 Respiration: 70, Weight: 3.300 kg, 7.26 lb, 0.22 m2
Pants was bright and alert. There was a large bony mass caudal and ventral to her left eye. The mass was nonpainful. Mandibular lymph nodes are palpably normal. Thoracic auscultation was within normal limits with no murmurs or arrhythmias noted. Abdominal palpation was unremarkable.
Diagnostic tests: Fine needle aspirate of the skull mass: pending
CBC, chemistry panel, and urinalysis are pending
Chest radiographs (3-view) were negative for metastatic disease
Skull radiographs reveal a very large bony lytic/proliferative skull mass. The left zygomatic arch is completely destroyed.
Ultrasound findings: An abdominal ultrasound was performed. The liver was of normal size and echogenicity. No abnormalities were noted in the gall bladder. The spleen had normal blood-flow and echogenicity. The kidneys were bilaterally symmetrical and smooth. The urinary bladder was of normal size with no changes to the mucosal surface noted. The lymph nodes were of normal size and no masses were noted within the abdomen. No abnormalities were noted in the remainder of the examination.
Diagnosis: Open; I am most suspicious of chondro or osteosarcoma.
Assessment: It does not appear that the presumptive tumor has spread to any other area of her body. Her mouth cannot open more than about 8-10 mm, so intubation for anesthesia or endoscopy for PEG tube placement would be impossible. She should be ingesting between 175 and 200 calories per day to maintain her current weight. I expect that canned food would be easier for her. Unfortunately, the tumor is so extensive that there is no good surgical option for her. Radiation therapy could be performed, but requires intubation. I feel that the radiation oncologist would want both a tracheostomy and a gastrostomy tube in place before considering treatment. Chemotherapy had some activity against osteosarcoma , but as we discussed, there is so much bony change that actually shrinking the mass may not be possible. We would definitely recommend placing a feeding tube before chemotherapy.
Plan/owner instructions: I will call Monday when cytology and bloodwork results are available. Please think about the placement of a feeding tube, whether or not you pursue therapy. It is difficult to know how quickly the tumor is growing and how quickly this bone destruction will progress. CT/MRI and biopsy would shed more light on the specific tumor type and extent of disease, but unfortunately the treatment options remain limited.
Thank you again for referring Pants to Veterinary Medical Specialists. Please call if you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of this case.
Sincerely,
Casey Cadile, DVM |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 13th, 2006|11:35 pm] |
I'm making myself crazy with this. I know I'm not going to be able to sleep much tonight. Dave reminded me to eat but somehow it hasn't happened yet. I really should, I'm getting hungry. Bit late though. There's a spot between my neck and my left shoulder that started hurting this morning and hasn't stopped even after four Advil, and I keep noticing that my jaw hurts from being locked.
She just acts so...normal. Except that she can't play with her shoestring because she can't pick it up in her mouth, and she doesn't chew on my fingers. But she wanders around the house sleeping and such...I guess she hasn't gone running after Dudley a lot, but that isn't all that unusual.
I think she has been losing weight, although this might just be a mental thing now. I'm overanalyzing everything. I get up and look for her every hour or two, and if she's sleeping somewhere I think she's curled up to die. She still purrs when I hold her, and she follows me around the house like always...
When I look at her now all I can see is the tumor, and I wonder how I ever missed it. I don't even want to take pictures of her right now.
I hope I get some resolution somehow tomorrow. The place that actually does the CT scan is in Concord. I don't think I can wait a whole weekend before finding something out.
The wet food sort of worked, although it was more chunky than I had expected. I may try a different brand that is more like the soft mushy stuff I thought it would be.
Maybe this is karma; now I am having to take those days off that I hoarded before.
I promise that this will get more cheerful sometime soon. Somehow. |
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| cat |
[Jul. 13th, 2006|05:13 pm] |
I took her for a second opinion today. The doctor observed that although she did have the tooth problems, it was probably more relevant that she can't open her mouth more than a tiny bit and this is probably tied to the tumor on the side of her head, near her left ear. It's really noticeable now that the doctor pointed it out.
I'm taking her to another specialist tomorrow morning. She may have a CT scan. Once I know more I'll try to figure out what to do.
She acts almost completely normal except for the mouth issues. She still likes ham, although I have to cut it really really small. I sliced a 5" diameter circle of ham into quarter-inch-square pieces. She seemed to like it. I'm going to try her on wet food. It will probably be messy.
If something's going to be done, it probably needs to be done soon one way or the other. I think she's beginning to lose weight. Unsurprising I suppose.
My family has offered to help me with the expenses of figuring out what to do, and then we'll figure out how to do what we're going to do.
She might still be okay.
I cried a lot today. |
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| new pet hospital |
[Jul. 12th, 2006|04:52 pm] |
I'm going to Adobe Pet Hospital tomorrow and subjecting small cat to more prodding to see if I want to have the procedure done there. They quoted me a vague and general estimate about $1k lower than the place I went today, and some of my coworkers said it's a good place, and I've seen some good online reviews.
Also, some bits about the problem from Adobe's web site:
Cats are a special case. They have cells called odontoclasts that, for reasons not totally understood, break down the enamel of teeth at the gum line, creating a hole that appears as a red spot on your cat's tooth. These lesions can be painful, as evidenced when this spot is probed with a thumbnail, when the cat will suddenly jerk the lower jaw in pain. Many cats continue to eat normally despite having several of these lesions present. Over time, the erosion will continue and the crown of the tooth will crack off, leaving the stump. The gingiva will eventually grow over the area to protect it and the roots remaining will be reabsorbed. In some cases the gingiva will form a collar around the tooth, covering the defect before the crown has broken off. The only treatment available is extraction; these lesions cannot be "filled," as they are not true "cavities." |
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| cat addendum |
[Jul. 12th, 2006|10:57 am] |
Last night I was feeling bad about small cat and bought a new cat bed and cat carrier. They didn't have a cat bed before but they seem to like this one. I will put it under the window where they like sleeping in the sun.
I had to get a new cat carrier because they've learned to be suspicious of the big plastic thing. This was a soft duffel-bag kind of carrier with mesh sides and a padded bottom. It worked better than I could have hoped; small cat decided that it was a good place to sleep and kept going in there voluntarily. I dropped her in this morning and petted her a bit and she curled up and purred...I felt really guilty when I closed and zipped the top and picked her up. I wonder if she'll remember and not want to go in it again. |
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| bad things come in arbitrarily large numbers |
[Jul. 12th, 2006|09:47 am] |
The light hypersensitivity issues I mentioned back in March have come back. I need to make another appointment with my eye doctor, I guess. It hasn't been quite as crippling as it was in Colorado, but I did have to wear my sunglasses at the movie Saturday and I had trouble looking at the projection screen in a meeting yesterday. I'm sure it has some significant psychological aspect -- it gets a lot worse once I become conscious of it, and it doesn't seem to affect me much while I'm playing basketball outside, but I'm feeling it right now while working.
Small cat has been drooling more than usual lately, and I noticed a couple days ago that when I gave her a cat treat, she wanted to eat it but couldn't get it into her mouth unless I cut it up for her. I got an appointment at a pet dentistry place for this morning. The vet asked a couple questions and then pulled her lips back, and there were little red areas above a couple of her teeth. She has feline odontoclastic resorptive lesions. You can read the link if you want a really detailed explanation for some reason, but the quick summary is: they're like cavities but not caused by bacteria. It's caused by some protective cells that get turned on and don't turn off; they make cavities in the teeth and go under the gum line. Vets think that it might be related to getting too much vitamin D, and that modern cat foods tend to have more than necessary since it breaks down over time so they put too much in so it doesn't all go away before the latest date that the food might hit the shelves. But they aren't totally sure what causes it and there isn't a treatment other than removing the affected teeth and hoping it doesn't come back. The vitamin D thing is a pretty recent discovery and they think that helps but they're not sure. So she has to go in and have a couple teeth extracted, and I have to put some stuff on her teeth every week and brush her teeth every day. This is going to cost a couple thousand dollars, but...she's really obviously hurting, and it seems foolish to risk her "best cat ever" title by being cheap. This is going to cut significantly into my travel (and food and entertainment) budget though, so perhaps this is merely God's way of expressing displeasure at my greediness in re paid time off.
In other news, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was enh. All of the action scenes were longer than they needed to be and got kind of boring, the comic relief guys were irritating rather than funny, and Orlando Bloom isn't really all that interesting. Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp were good though. It's possible that my dislike of the movie is partially tied to my physical difficulties in watching it, but Dave wasn't a huge fan either.
California Extreme (a pinball/video game show) was entertaining, although there were quite a lot more broken games than I would have liked to see. One of the Twilight Zone machines had a mostly dead flipper, the Star Trek guns didn't work, the Cyberball joysticks were not very good, etc. It was still fun, but expensive. In retrospect this is the same attitude I have toward the garlic festival, which I'm planning to go to anyway, but I only go every couple years.
I am anxiously awaiting the next random hosing to be inflicted upon me. I assume my luck will turn around sometime soon but I am getting tired of waiting. |
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| Technical (AI) question |
[Jul. 7th, 2006|11:21 pm] |
I have a set of points P on a Cartesian plane:
P0:(x0,y0), P1:(x1,y1), P2:(x2,y2), etc.
I can easily calculate the distance between any two points.
How can I find the minimal set of points Q such that all points in the full set P are within n units of at least one point in set Q? Note that Q must be a strict subset of the points in P.
Another way to look at the question is to try to figure out the set of points Q that is a subset of P for which, if you draw circles around them of radius n, it covers the entire plane. This may or may not be easier to do.
If you have any idea how to do this, what general technique would be used to do this so that I can research it, or an appropriate person to ask, I'd love to know about it. |
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| poll results |
[Jul. 7th, 2006|11:07 pm] |
(note: some unknown reader who works at Motorola only answered the first question, so there's a different number of responses for the two questions.)
q1 (what would you do):
| I would absolutely go to work | 3 |
| I would absolutely stay home | 4 |
| It would depend on my financial/debt status | 4 |
| It would depend on how much I liked my coworkers | 2 |
q2 (what would the average American do):
| I would absolutely go to work | 6 |
| I would absolutely stay home | 0 |
| It would depend on my financial/debt status | 4 |
| It would depend on how much I liked my coworkers | 2 |
An interesting note: of the 12 respondents that answered both questions, 9 gave different answers:
Q1 |
| Q2 |
|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|
| 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
|---|
| 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
|---|
| 3 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
|---|
| 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
|---|
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I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it means something. I guess in general most people believe that the general public is more likely to go to work than they are, although the people who would definitely go to work think the public is less likely. Go fig.
This question came about from my deciding whether to go to work Wednesday, which I did. It was the third day of my taking the pinkeye medicine and the doctor thought I wouldn't be contagious, but there was probably some question. I decided to go in and avoid people as much as possible, so I ate by myself and didn't go socialize a lot. I talked to my father afterwards and we had a somewhat lengthy discussion in which he said (not quite this bluntly) that anyone who would go to work while sick is an unmitigated asshole, and that it shouldn't be necessary to create any sort of economic incentives for people not to go to work when sick because it's the moral and ethical thing to do and it's the American way to put the good of the group above your personal good. This last part I found laughable, the rest curious.
I guess having just gotten an econ degree, I am used to thinking of things in those terms, and although I understand that there's some value to knowing you did the "right thing", I'm unconvinced it's that large. You'd think if the company wanted you to behave a certain way, they'd be willing to incent you to do it. |
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