| 10 dec 2001 yeah. it's past midnight, so it's no longer monday, but i was taking a shower (a nice hot scalding shower, something i developed a taste for while going out with karine, who liked it super-hot), i decided i really wanted to write. so i got out, dried off, and didn't even bother to put on any clothes before sauntering to the living room. so this is my first official naked post. jo-ann's birthday was seven days ago. i totally forgot. i guess i was so preoccupied with kristie's birthday last friday that jo-ann's totally slipped my mind. whoops. last year, i was all upset about my dwindling prospects with jo-ann, so i gave her her birthday gift exactly two months before, expecting to do a dramatic "goodbye" exit from her life. i got her a pair of blue-lensed oakleys that she was eyeing while we were in portland. they were a nice pair of sunglasses. so today i kept calling and calling the HR girl and the CTO of greenfield. i must have called them 5 times each. no one picked up. i got really really pissed off. what the fuck is going on? i was all ready to negotiate my offer and stuff. so i basically sat at home all day, watching my cell phone in hopes that they'd get their e-mails AND voice messages and call me back. i'm pretty frustrated with their lack of response. but anyway, it seems i've got a little posse back at vivace looking out for me. mohammad called me and gave me some more pointers and advice about my job selection, and raghavan (my old project lead) e-mailed me an article about revenues for networking chip makers. i wonder how much amusement this whole job saga is bringing them. but i get this feeling that those people feel i can do better. meaning that i should be working for a company with better prospects. but there are two problems with this. first, i'm just not very clueful as to what i should be looking for. being very very ignorant in the networking domain, i have no idea whether what companies say they're doing is cool or not. yes, this problem can be solved by me consulting people such as my ex-coworkers, but then again, greenfield told me what they're doing, and it went over my head, and i'm not allowed to tell the other guys what i heard because i signed an NDA and all that. and the other issue is that i just don't think there are any "hot" companies out there. either they don't exist, or they exist and i can't find them out; the latter is sort of an epistemological problem for me. anyways, so i'm glad that mohammad, adam, chi-kai, and raghavan are there to help me. but i just don't know if i want to keep searching and find something that satisfies them; i hate being without an income... it's starting to eat at me... i mean, i have enough savings to keep me going for a decent amount of time, but... *shrug* i have a feeling that those guys have a lot higher standards than i do. armed with knowledge and a strong inquisitive attitude, i'm sure that they'd grill the shit out of any prospective companies. i mean, i know that choosing a company with a bright future is really important, because of the financial rewards. but i think that i'm just giving up on making a big killing because my impression is that it's rather impossible to pull off these days in this current economic climate. it's like they're in a different league of expectation and awareness than me. i know i can learn a lot about how to evaluate companies from them, but i wonder if i just don't have the patience for it right now. i guess i miss being blissfully ignorant at vivace, not worrying about the faltering economy out there, being happy blanketed in my cube. now, having gone through this, i feel like there's just a much bigger world, and that world is filled with uncertainty and worse... it's filled with doom. i hate that feeling. oh well. on another front, i saw _ocean's eleven_ on sunday with jeremy, jay, and margaret. i really liked it. it's a great HEIST film. i mean, i really love it when i watch a movie about smart people commiting intellectual crimes. by "intellectual" i mean something that takes a lot of thought and planning. and yes, you have to suspend your disbelief in that the heist in this movie (or any movie like it) can actually be pulled off without any hitches, but still... watching it unfold and seeing them execute the plan is just plain satisfying. i recommend the flick. and the fact that this movie had a bunch of big stars was also cool... i mean, it's not like i was in awe of the star power... but the movie feels like it was really fun to make, with each famous actor putting aside his ego and just having fun with other famous person on the screen. i went to the post office today to mail out 30 copies of the taiko newsletter. no, i didn't mail myself a copy. there was an ass-long line at the post office, with most people mailing out big boxes, probably for christmas. the guy in front of me was mailing a package out to indonesia. so apparently, it costs 80 cents to mail a letter to singapore or japan. i waited a good 20-30 minutes in line... i spent the time fretting about what i would do if greenfield called me on my cell phone while i was in line, and whether i was willing to negotiate dollar amounts and stuff like that in the open public. and i also picked at my ear for more ear wax, but stopped when i felt the burning eyes of the woman behind me... she was probably really offended or something. so you know tomax and xamot, the two crimson guard (is that the name of their brigade) twins in g.i.joe? and how the two twins are linked, so that if one of them gets hit, the other one feels the pain? so... think about it... what if one of them is having sex? does the other one pop a boner? it's a weird thought... and an even weirder affliction to have. and alas... i'm sure the creators of the series will never tackle the issue. so it looks pretty grim for jay and i holding a christmas bash at our place... i've been looking forward to inviting the online peeps, the taiko peeps, the drawgroup, and jay's lambda brothers over... but jay's call schedule is heinous. he has no weekends free. the poor guy is even on call christmas day, i think. shit. i feel like throwing a party and being surrounded by all my friends again. jay got an xbox the other day. well, it arrived at our house weeks ago, while he was in costa rica, and i suspected it was an xbox because it was from eb (electronics boutique). but anyways, we opened it up a few days ago, and started playing halo. i'm not a big fan of the first person shooter (because i suck at anything where i'm required to move AND aim), but the sweet thing about halo is that two people can play cooperatively. hot damn! so jay and i played a bit tonight. we have just landed on the ring planet, but there's this point where the airship drops a shitload of aliens, and they just kick our asses. i think we're gonna be stuck here for a while. but it's great fun, playing a video game with somebody else. too often, games just accomodate one player, so the other people around just wind up watching and feeling bored. it's fun to have jay playing with me, with both of us calling the aliens "bitches" and screaming "FUCK" when we get hit badly or when we accidentally blow ourselves up with fragmentation grenades. it reminds me of back when alan and i played diablo and starcraft together. well, that's it for today. dammit. hopefully greenfield gets in contact with me tomorrow. i'm starting to get really annoyed with them. |