Life

General ramblings connected to my personal life and activities.

Getting active

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I really have no idea how interesting (or horrendously boring) the sudden proliferation of posts falling into my ‘politics‘ category is, but in all honesty, it’s been all sorts of fascinating for me when I stop to step back for a moment and look at myself.

Until recently, I’ve never been overly politically minded, or even very politically conscious. I knew my general outlook leaned toward the liberal side of things, of course, and I’d occasionally make random grumbling noises when I saw or heard about something that I found excessively stupid or aggravating, but that was generally about the extent of it. For all too much of my life, I lived in something of a bubble of my own creation — I had my world, and my friends, and most things outside of that bubble just didn’t get much thought.

It was during the 2000 Gore/Bush presidential race that this started to change for me. I’d given up watching television quite a long time ago (roughly 1990 or so, I think), but I went ahead and got a cable subscription at that point so that I could actually pay attention to the debates. While Gore wasn’t nearly as impressive as I hoped, even then Bush worried me, and I wanted to see if the impressions I’d picked up until that point bore out. Unfortunately, they did — Gore still didn’t impress me as much as I hoped, but Bush worried me more and more every time he opened his mouth.

Watching the rest of the race was an exercise in both fascination and frustration, and by the end when the popularly elected candidate lost due to the ridiculous intricacies of the electoral college system, I more or less threw up my hands in frustration and tuned out again. The cable subscription was turned off, and I went back into my bubble — not quite as much, though. Too much was happening for me to be able to justify tuning out as much as I used to.

Then came 9/11, and suddenly it was impossible for me not to pay attention anymore. There were times when I wanted to tune out, of course, and some of my friends did just that, but I couldn’t do that anymore. Things have gotten too big, too important, not to have some idea of what’s happening.

Suddenly, I’m reading political websites on a regular basis. I’m paying attention to news from all over the world. More than just reading and ranting about things, I’m taking the time to participate when I can by going to rallys around town. I’m looking into the various candidates for the 2004 election cycle, and may have found one worth supporting in more than a “yeah, he seems interesting” lackadaisacal sort of way.

It took me nearly thirty years to get here, but I’m here now. None to sure where the road I’ve stumbled upon is going to lead, but — as frustrating and frightening as it is at times — really enjoying the new scenery, so to speak.

There’s a whole world out there that I’m a part of, and it’s obviously time for me to start acting like I’m a part of it.

I hope this doesn’t bore you all too much in the meantime. I promise to still make my usual inane posts from time to time in the midst of all this. ;)

Building 42

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An entertaining little bit of trivia about Microsoft’s building numbering schemes over on Scott Guthrie’s blog produced this amusing bit of MS trivia:

[Building 42] is also a little unique in that it straddles the line between the cities of Redmond and Bellevue. This was apparently something of a challenge when getting planning permission — since Redmond had a town ordinance that prevented buildings from being more than three stories tall, while Bellevue allowed an unrestricted number of building floors to be built.

Microsoft wanted the new Building 42 to be a nice four stories tall — but despite the fact that 2/3rds of it would have lived in Bellevue, the planning permission folks in Redmond apparently insisted that it not be more than three. After a lot of wrangling, they finally reached a compromise whereby the 1/3rd of the building that lived in Redmond was built to be 3 stories tall — and the 2/3rds of the building which lived in Bellevue was built to the full 4 stories in height.

If you are ever driving past campus on 156^th^ Avenue, you can spot the exact Redmond/Bellevue city border by seeing where an otherwise normal, professional looking building suddenly changes height.

This isn’t my building — MSCopy, the Xerox printshop for Microsoft, is over in Building 123 — I just thought it was interesting.

Candlelight Vigil at Green Lake, Seattle

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Little girl at the candlelight vigil

I was just starting to go through my regular online reading tonight when one of the first posts I read was Shelly Powers’ post about the candlelight vigil she was planning on attending (Update: her post about the vigil she attended is up). I checked the MoveOn page where the vigils were being organized, and found that there were many planned for Seattle. The largest was being held at Green Lake, so ten minutes later I was on a bus out to Green Lake.

The entire vigil was very nice. Hundreds of people turned out (literally — when I was on the MoveOn page, over 500 people had signed on with intent to attend, and I’m sure that many more showed up that hadn’t hit the website) for the walk around the lake. Greenlake is already one of the prettiest areas of Seattle that I’ve seen so far, but it was absolutely gorgeous tonight. Lit by an incredibly bright full moon, at any point along the three mile path you could look across the shimmering waters of the lake and see the softly flickering lights of candles being carried along by participants. An area by the main parking lot had been set aside as the primary staging and meeting area, and some people had set up a quick sculpture that looked like it may have been modeled after an American Indian dreamcatcher (I’m not sure if the design had any special significance, it’s just that that was what it reminded me of).

As has been the hallmark of the recent demonstrations, the assembled people were from across the spectrum, from students to businesspeople to entire families. Everything was nicely low-key, as people worked their way along the path either singly or with friends, talking quietly, enjoying the cool weather, the walk, and the companionship of so many others gathered together in their hope for peace. As people left, one section of flowerbed started gathering candles that hadn’t gone out yet, carefully placed between the daffodils, creating a softly glowing island of serenity on the way out of the park.

As I made my way around the lake (candleless, unfortunately, but with camera in hand), I came up behind a family with two little girls. One of the girls (shown in the picture at the beginning of this post), striding in front of the group, carried her candle in front of her and proudly set the pace for her family by singing “My country ’tis of thee.” The simple sound of her young voice singing that song as she walked gave the lyrics an air not of irony, but of hope — words of a land of liberty, letting freedom ring from every mountainside.

How I hope she’s right.

I’ve posted some pictures (those that weren’t too dark to be visible) of the evening’s walk on my family’s website. Feel free to take a look.

I want a Big Wheel!

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Big Wheel!

From a Yahoo! Messenger conversation with my friend Laura back up in Alaska…

Laura: dawn just got a bike!!! i’m so jealous!!!
Michael: really? wow…cool!
Laura: not a harley…but still…
Michael: Big Wheel? lol
Laura: LMAO
Laura: that would be cool
Michael: dude
Michael: I would so get an adult-size Big Wheel
Michael: haul my happy ass around seattle on it
Michael: that would rock
Michael: r
Michael: a
Michael: w
Michael: k
Michael: rawk
Laura: HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Michael: lmao
Laura: that would be so very very cool
Laura: lol
Michael: y’know, I think the front wheel would end up something like four feet high
Michael: sweet
Michael: lol
Laura: someone could probably make a lot of money off people like us….
Michael: no kidding
Michael: i need to go into business
Laura: it’s another get rich quick scheeme

New job position!

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I’ve got a new position at work! My first full day was yesterday — I hadn’t written about it yet, both because it all happened fairly quickly, and because I don’t like to jinx things too much before they happen.

Last Friday, my boss came up to me and told me that one of the guys in the EDS area (where customer submitted files are tweaked, adjusted, set up, and sent to the printers) was leaving, and asked if I’d be interested in taking a shot at the spot in there. Hm. Was I interested? You bet’cha.

So starting this week, I’m now a member of the EDS team at MSCopy, Xerox’s print shop on the Microsoft campus. I’m finally away from the Big Green Button! I’ll now be spending my days bouncing among Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Pagemaker — and probably more, those were just the ones I got to play with yesterday — making sure everything we’re sent is ready to go flying out of the machines. Fun stuff!

Quiet time

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I’m around, I just haven’t been feeling overly talkative lately. Not sure why, really, but figured a couple days away from the weblog wouldn’t really hurt anyone.

I’ll surface a bit more later on tonight, after I’m home from work, but I wanted to get a quick note of this up — the Seattle Times is starting a weblog tracking the Iraq conflict called Battle Lines. No clue where it’ll go, as they’re still on their first post, but it might be worth keeping an eye on.

Oh, and while they’re not linked from the main page, you can find RSS feeds here (RDF) and here (XML).

Update:

There are also two associated weblogs as part of the site — one by a family against the war, and one by a family in support of the war.

Interesting approach, this. Could it be one of the first signs of corporate media “getting” blogs? Dunno yet, too early to tell.

Nice to see they’re using MovableType, though! Now the just need to turn on comments, trackback, and all the other associated goodies!

Just Hang Up

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Hang up when I’m talking to you. Get off your cell phone. In fact, turn off your cell phone. Just turn it off, put it down somewhere out of reach, and pay attention to the conversation that you’re already invovled in.

I’m sick of cell phones — or rather, I’m sick of what we put up with when cell phones are involved.

Personal calls at work on company time? Forbidden, of course — unless that call comes in on the cell phone at someone’s hip. Having a conversation with someone? Sorry, hold on, I’ve got a call. Out at dinner at a nice restaurant? Hope you don’t mind sitting there while I chat on the phone. Driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour in that gas-guzzling SUV that’s never left the pavement? Perfect time to distract yourself with the phone!

Why, for so many people, is everything put aside when the ringer goes off? You’ve got voicemail on that thing, right? Good. Then use it when I’m talking to you. I’m standing in front of you, looking you in the face — that should take precedence.

Expecting an important call? Fine, I can accept that — use the caller ID to check before answering if you can. If you can’t do that, then if an incoming call is not “the call,” make your apologies, offer to call back, and hang up.

This is simple stuff. To me, at least. Why doesn’t it seem to be for anyone else?

If you are using a cell phone, think about your behaviour while you’re on the phone. It’s basically a given that the people around you are going to be able to hear your side of the conversation — often whether they want to or not. Put some small amount of thought into what those around you are hearing. I’ve seen businessmen in expensive three-piece suits take a call and immediately turn into a foul-mouthed frat boy talking to whichever friend called, then hang up and turn back to the business conversation as if nothing had happened.

In a noisy environment? Maybe you should find a quiet place for that oh-so-important call then. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve been able to “sit in” on because one or the other party couldn’t hear well, so voices were raised, shouting into the phone, apparently under the bizarre assumption that there was some sort of “cone of silence” surrounding them. Here’s a hint, folks — we can hear you. Especially when you’re yelling.

Oh, and just because a cell phone is on your hip and you have the ability to call someone every time some little thing crosses your brain — don’t. Please don’t. Chances are, it’s not that important. If it’s really important, you’ll know it — if it can wait, let it wait. I’ve already lost too many hours to calls that had no real purpose or need, made only because there was no inhibition stopping it. I don’t need to lose any more.

I’m starting to feel like some sort of freak in today’s society. I don’t have a cell phone, nor do I want a cell phone. The only time I’ve owned one it was required by my job — and paid for by my job, too. I’m just sick to death of seeing people so engrossed in their phones that they neglect everything else.

Sorry about the rant. But please — put down the phone. Pay attention to the world.

Everything's broken

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Four months ago, workmen started on a two-month project to renovate the apartment building I live in. We’re still waiting for them to finish.

We’ve had to put up with interruptions to every normal service. Electricity, heat, hot water, laundry — all of it has been cut off at one point or another. The laundry, of course, was one of the first things to go, so for the past four months, we’ve had to pay more money to go to a laundromat a few blocks away.

This week, I found out that the laundry facilities had finally reopened. So today, I started trying to do my laundry.

  • One of the washers has its coin slot jammed. Okay, I can cope with that, there’s still two more washers.
  • One of the other two washers occasionally decides to eat your quarters, but not start the wash cycle.
  • One of the dryers won’t even take quarters — the slider doohickey is jammed. Again, there’s two more dryers to work with.
  • The final straw? The original plans called for new electric washers and dryers. Plans changed at some point, so they put back in the old dryers. Gas dryers. In a ‘renovated’ laundry room with no gas hookups. End result? All the dryers are now ‘Air Dry’ only. Any guesses just how dry jeans get with ‘Air Dry’ only? Not at all. So now I’ve got jeans hung on the heater, over doors, over my shower curtain, and I’m just hoping that I’ve got at least one pair that’s actually wearable tomorrow morning.

I’m sick of this.

We’ve lost a good quarter of the tenants because of all the problems with this project. The only thing that’s really kept me here is that I don’t really have the spare cash to just pick up and find a new place. God, I wish I did, though….