Sphere of Archives

October 3, 1999

A La Recherche du Temps Perdus

I spent the afternoon shopping. I was looking for hockey cards for my nephew, since he expects a present when I go home for Thanksgiving. I went into a hobby shop, and immediately recalled my teenage years spent playing Dungeons and Dragons -- hours spent looking at figurines, furtively reading fantasy stories from the magazine rack, debating whether or not to buy a particular game module or reference book. I was a little surprised to see a bunch of kids doing the same thing that afternoon.

But the fantasy lives on. After the parodies and the stereotypes of the early nineties, there is a Dungeons and Dragons movie in the works, starring Tom Baker, Jeremy Irons, and some unknowns. Well, after a bland cartoon and a glut of bloated fantasy books, the D&D concept has probably reached the natural and evolutionary media stage where a movie (and subsequent book based on the screen play, and the soundtrack release, and the McDonald's collector's cups) is required. Will it be cheesy? Oh yeah. Will it have an 'R' rating? I can only hope.

October 6, 1999

Failure

I filled out a survey for some Carleton University group. The group is studying career movement patterns in the high-technology sector. I was one of the lucky 4,000 randomly-chosen people requested to share my thoughts on my career goals, my feelings about my job, managerial support and about mobility within the corporation. As I worked through the survey, I started getting depressed. I realized, again, that I want to do a different kind of work.

I brought this up with the network administrator as I was driving him to a car dealership across town. He doesn't want me to leave, because he's thinking of leaving, too, and he wants to pass the torch to me. Then he said people have to make their own opportunities in the organization or else they go nowhere.

So I was back to my original state of mind, thinking of how I could update my resume in some meaningful way. My resume has never worked for me, and no-one seems to know why. I've seen other people's resumes, and mine is definitely superior. Still, maybe I should consider a Playboy watermark.

October 8, 1999

Idiot Rule

Never take a test you can't pass. I took an IQ test for my brother's master's thesis. He asked the questions with persona that was part game show host, part garotte-wielding psycho-killer, with his eyes hovering over the pages of a binder. Watching me. Waiting.

The test is designed for a particular group that I don't fit into, so I had to lie on the registration form. It won't skew the results too much, right? To the psychological world, I'm an anglophone French-Canadian twenty-something conspiracy nut.

Most of the questions were dead easy. It helped that I had taken the test before when it was in the design stage. I had a lot more fun with that one. I think I had had a few beers. My answers had lots of references to drugs and sex games. I tried to be more serious this time around -- no lesbians! I got the same math questions wrong (who cares about the square root of 'a' to the ninth power?), but I still managed a King Lear reference in the reading comprehension section.

October 12, 1999

Shoot me now!

I wake up at 4:30 a.m. to catch my plane. I have a cold. One of my MIS classmates is on the flight to Toronto. He's doing a Windows NT migration in some office environment. Like everyone else in my class, he's not interested in what I'm doing. We don't talk on the plane.

I get to work at eleven. I hear my manager is looking for me. I read a long trail of e-mail about the project I left behind on Thursday. After lunch, I call people to get a feel for what's going on now. I go to a bland General Information Seminar on the corporate strategy and how it relates to me (it doesn't, really, because I'm not in marketing).

And then it's back to the Emergency. Sitting in front of the machine that won't work, I think I'm wasting everyone's time. It should work. No-one knows why it doesn't. While people lower their expectations about my capabilities, I'm trying to think of how to put a positive spin on this in my resume.

October 13, 1999

"Is God in home decorating, too?"

I spent Thanksgiving weekend reading up on feng shui. I had nothing better to do. I found out my front door is deep in the pleasure zone, which means pleasure is the default focus of my home. My sofa bed is in the fame zone, and my bed is in the children zone.

Other stuff:

• based on the Chinese calendar, I'm just a white dog on fire
• I have a metallic yang personality (likes to be precise, controlling, hates clutter, should avoid dryness)
• my lucky element is water, and I'll have no luck until I'm 32. Plus "you will be lucky in the winter (cold weather). You will have better luck if you wear in black. You will have better lucky at night..."
• my unlucky element is fire, so "you should be less luck in the summer. You shouldn't wear in red. You won't be lucky in the years of horse or snake. You should avoid the hot and spicy food..."

So, I re-arranged my apartment. I now have a cozy living area, a central desk/computing area, and a better view of the sky from my bed. I turned my lava lamp on. So far, I don't feel any luckier.

October 14, 1999

Another Grey Hair

People say I look really stressed out. It's this E1/T1 project. But today was the ultimate ego blow. After days of trying to eliminate the problem, the manager from the other half of the operations support department spends about 30 seconds fiddling with the controls and gets the thing working. I look like a tremendous idiot who couldn't install DOS to save his life.

Maybe there's a silver lining. Maybe fewer people will ask me to do work for them, and I can spend more time drinking coffee, reading the latest advertorials and studying my peers.

October 18, 1999

Silence

It's finally over. The status report has been e-mailed to everyone remotely involved or interested in the project. It was definitely bitter-sweet writing that. I did almost all of the work, because no-one else knew what to do. But then it was late, so I'm the only one who gets hammered. On the plus-side, I am now the E1/T1 expert. On the minus-side, I'm officially unreliable.

Now the phone doesn't ring. I don't have voice mail messages waiting for me in the morning. My e-mail count is down to normal. I'm back to drinking warm coffee.

October 21, 1999

"Don't leave me."

Winnipeg's loss is my personal gain. I'm helping the network adminstrator set up the lab LAN for the Manitobans arriving next month. Actually, I'll be doing most of the work. Equipment has to be ordered, diagrams have to be drawn, IP addresses have to be allocated, and cables have to be pulled. And I have to spell-check the administrator's memoranda.

Now I'm indispensible to him. He's started a habit of massaging my shoulders whenever he comes into my cubicle to ask me to do something. Then he says, "I need you. Don't leave me. You know T1. You know E1. Don't leave me." At first I thought it was weird ("That's sexual harassment!"). Now it's practically a daily routine.

October 21, 1999

Aim for the Head

Something about team building brings out the killer in me. This time it was two-hours of intense badminton yesterday. I had very low expectations of everyone else's playing ability, so I was surprised that some of the people (the Asians) were able to smash the bird occasionally. I was a demon on the court: running cross-court for a clear, smashing short serves back to the servers, smashing down the line, and every once in a while a slow-motion short to keep everyone on their toes. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera.

My manager really enjoyed himself, and urged me to organize a badminton club for the department. Now we're playing Wednesday nights at 9 p.m., the only time available.

But, of course, there is a political angle to this. One of the up-and-coming managers from another department was playing with us yesterday. At lunch today, he approached me and blamed me for exhausting him and ruining his squash game last night. Then I said I played squash, too, and that if he wants, I'll take him to school. Then he walked away. Somewhere, across the cafeteria, someone cried, "What an ass-kisser!"

October 22, 1999

Happy Birthday, Boss !

It was my manager's birthday today. His wife called earlier in the week to set things up for a surprise party in one of the conference rooms. I made posters, ordered beverages and organized the gift fund-raising ("Give whatever you feel is in your heart"). Another co-worker got balloons and sent out invitations. His wife brought a large chestnut cake from a Chinese deli. The manager seemed impressed with the whole thing. Instead of working, for an hour I ate cake and drank coffee.

October 29, 1999

The Good Time Band

A friend asked me to watch his son play at The Good Time Cafe, a seedy bar/restaurant located in the Shopper City strip mall at Baseline and Navajo. It's a dingy place. A group of drywallers were swearing up a storm at one end of the bar. At the other end, a drunk was staring at the wall. The band's groupies/girlfriends were there, too. They looked like each other -- long blonde hair, inexpensive pantsuits, sipping cocktails. One of them was named Melissa.

I suppose the son has talent, good on several types of guitar, a bit lacking in vocal range and volume. The other three guys were not so good. They could have been playing in separate venues or in their bedrooms for all the acknowledgement they gave each other. Occasionally one would look around at his colleagues absorbed in their own playing, as if realizing for the first time, "Hey, I'm in a band. Cool."

The drummer could only play at one volume, really really loud. He had a headset on (to hear the rest of the band? That's a hint, guy.), but he was clearly enjoying himself. No-one in the band has the heart to tell him the truth. The bass player was physically separated from the rest of the band, smiling vacantly in an entirely different direction from the rest of the band. The lead singer was one a Counting Crows freak - the clothes, the beard, the whiny nasal voice. You could tell which songs were his favourites because he would start swaying and bobbing his head.

During the second set, some of the drunker audience members mingled with the crowd and doing little jigs. Then they would look around to see if anyone was watching them. Seeing none, they'd start again.

October 31, 1999

Halloween

I spent the day playing video games and watching television.

November 3, 1999

The Badminton Club

Today was the first day for the badminton club I sort of started. There was my manager, another Asian co-worker, and me. First I tired out the co-worker. Then I took on my manager. I took a break to get some water. The woman at the check-in desk was staring at my legs. I think she was trying to determine if I was wearing boxers. And then I played against both my manager and my co-worker in a close game that ended just when our time was up.

November 7, 1999

Review: The House on Haunted Hill

It was a choice between "Fight Club" and "The House on Haunted Hill." Here is my rationale. I perceive "Fight Club" to be big-budget pro wrestling. "Haunted Hill," on the other hand, promised to be extra cheesy. What would you do?

It wasn't scary. A bunch of stupid, angry people get locked in a house with no phones or cable. It happens every day; it's called high school. The best part of the movie was the psychotic couple, the Prices. All that their "War of the Roses" hate affair needed was snappier dialogue, and they would have completely stolen the show. Of course, only the good-looking virgins escape an entertaining death-by-unmoisturized-skin.

I was hoping the movie would be a "banality of evil" and "perverted science" kind of film. The open montage hinted at that. There were a few short scenes done in stop-motion (or superfast motion, which is so old, ever since "Jacob's Ladder") hinting at warped perspectives. And it was set in a 1930s "asylum for the criminally insane." But even the first scene, where a fully-conscious patient undergoes an apendectomy, can't match the "Reservoir Dogs" torture scene for matter-of-fact brutality.

The funniest part of the movie was the explanation of how five strangers were related, which was supposed to explain why they were at the home decorator's nightmare in the first place. It turns out, they were relatives of the evil psychiatrists responsible for the haunting! "Yeah, I do remember Mom saying something about granddad being murdered by a gang of psychotic in-patients bent on revenge at this weird hospital." And then I started wondering, well, where are all the other relatives of these people? Don't they belong in the horror show, too?

In the end, I was left wondering how much better I would have done the film. That's the sign of a huge stinker.

November 10, 1999

All Of Our Lines Are Busy

You took some technological junk from work, but you don't know what it is. Who do you call? You can't get a spreadsheet formula to work. Who do you call? You need your computer hard drive reformatted (on purpose, this time). Who do you call? For people in my department, computer hiccups have only one answer -- "Phone Clark Kent."

So it was, yesterday. I helped a co-worker's daughter complete her university assignment over the phone. Like many newbies to the tech world, she was impressed by the "copy, paste, edit" paradigm, the founding principle of all technology. She was back to watching television in 30 minutes. Knowing that gives me a warm feeling deep inside.

November 13, 1999

Ugh

Another Saturday spent at work. From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. I toiled on several computer screens, loading software onto a MTX switch. Every switch has little quirks, requiring certain tricks and secret procedures passed down from technician to technician. By lunchtime I had everything loaded. Then I spent four futile hours running tests to try and make them work. I wrote my report and left work in disgust. I was starting to feel good about myself, anyway.

November 14, 1999

Where are all the geeks?

I went to see "The Messenger" this afternoon. I expected to be one guy among dozens of Women's Studies graduates. But no, the Joan of Arc story appeals to a whole bunch of nerds. I found myself sitting among a cluster of guys discussing computer hardware prices, swapping stories about operating system upgrades and overclocking processors. These are the people who have Slashdot as they're browser start-up page. They sounded a little smug about their technical expertise, too, which I don't like. ("They [a supplier] let me do that because they know what I'm doing, and they know I'm going to buy stuff.")

Then it was time to sit back and enjoy the Medieval gory festival of blood that apparently was St. Joan's life. The historical nitpickers will be up in arms, forgetting that this film is geared to an American audience, where a French accent means the character is French, a British accent means he's British, and an American accent means this is a big budget film. Wait for the video tape.

November 17, 1999

Coasting

There's stuff I could be working on right now. Instead, I spent the morning surfing the web on company time. Then I read a magazine. When I sent for the magazine subscription, I put my title as "MIS Guy," so the delivery label reads "Eric Clara, MIS Guy." (On the next subscription card I fill out, I'm going to be a space commander or a supreme leader.) Then I continued reading a small book on network switching: the struggle for bandwidth.

November 20, 1999

The Iron Chef

My brother Ian adores the Japanese cooking show Iron Chef. The show makes cooking into a sport, Betty Crocker meets sumo wrestling. It's a hilarious show. All the chefs are Japanese, though they cook several styles. I doubt a Canadian chef will ever get on, and I think my brother agrees.

Yeah. It'll never happen.

November 21, 1999

Sleepytime Hollow

Maybe I'm getting old, but I found myself daydreaming a couple of times while watching "Sleepy Hollow" this afternoon. It's a good film, not really scary, but it has an intriguing premise about science and spirituality. I expected Christina Ricci to be prettier, too. But don't wait for it on video, because the scenery won't have the same effect.

November 23, 1999

The Future

One of my co-workers has a one-Meg modem. He downloaded Corel's Linux 1.0 in nine minutes. He doesn't save shareware on his hard drive anymore. I asked him what he does with all the bandwidth. After a few hours of downloading every program he might want, does he watch Web T.V., or download/serve MP3 files? Does he have a WebCam?

He says he just leaves it on to check his e-mail.

November 28, 1999

Office Party

The company Christmas party happened last night. I was designated a seat with the people from the other half of the operations support team, rather than with my manager. I think the seating organizer for the departments had planned it that way. Mixed reviews of the band, but the dance floor was never empty. They played the usual inoffensive music one hears at weddings and other mixed gatherings.

So I yakked it up with my table. A couple of the guys were drinking tequila shots, and one of them decided to tell me his personal take on various political struggles in the office. He could barely speak, and I was drunk, too. A couple of times I thought I was in "Naked Lunch" redux, listening to an alien babbling in an incomprehensible language about the uglier side of life. I remember nodding at the right times.

Half the night I was standing at the bar with the computer support department. That was a lot of fun. The computer guys have sexier jobs, more interesting lifestyles, and, in most cases, better hair. They seemed to know everyone. Some of them have even formed their own blues band. I hear they may be looking for a UNIX guru. If I knew UNIX, that would be my in.

December 2, 1999

Leisure with Dignity

I'm the first to admit it. I sweat a lot when I exercise. Five minutes of stretching and I'm soaked. I'm not a butterball; I don't sweat while eating or climbing the stairs. Probably, I prefer to think of it as a highly efficient cooling system, not a humidifier.

But it puts people off. At TKD class, I am partnered with a woman who has voiced qualms in the past about working with me. She once asked one of the instructors for a different partner. When her request was denied, she asked (hypothetically) what needed to happen in order to get a new partner. Today she was more direct. She demanded I bring a towel to class to wipe off. The instructor, who was trying to be helpful, said in a loud voice, "Don't crowd by the walls. There are some dry spots over here."

What can I do? It's completely beyond my control. I've tried moving slower. I've tried wearing lighter clothing. I've tried extra-thick deoderant. I've tried doing more aerobics. I've tried eating more cold foods. I've tried focusing my thoughts on cold weather. Nothing has worked yet. So, I'll bring the towel to class. Maybe a squeegee mop, too.

December 5, 1999

Doing Absolutely Nothing

Friday was a bad day. I had to be at work for 7 a.m., which meant I had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. if I wanted to do all the preparatory stuff required in the morning. As it turns out, I was ready at 6, so I walked for 30 minutes to work.

I spent the morning loading software onto a switch. At the same time, I was training the new guy to do it. He doesn't understand English very well, but he can type at a good speed. My manager visited the cubicle several times throughout the day. He wanted status reports - how are things going, how the new guy was working out, what is going into the final report. I could tell this was a high-pressure situation for him. I didn't get the report out until four p.m., but honestly, I don't think the users care. They say they care, but they don't. I've been asked to do "emergency" work, then when I phoned the users to give a status report, I found out they've been gone for lunch for two hours.

So this weekend, I decided to take it slow. I slept in until nine. That was a great feeling. I haven't slept in that late since August, I think. I spent a couple of hours lounging inside Starbucks. I overheard a Nortel manager complaining to another about his screwed up family. I didn't go see a movie. Mostly I walked around Bayshore Mall.

December 8, 1999

That's Why I'm the Student

I am the least experienced person in the department, so I train the new people. Well, I'm not really the least experienced, but I'm the least experienced one who also works full-time hours and unpaid overtime. I'm showing the ropes to a shy, easily stressed-out Chinese engineer. He doesn't understand much English, so I have to repeat instructions many, many times. Even then, I'm not sure he's got it. And he can't tell when I'm being cynical/sarcastic and when I'm being earnest ("Do this, and run this program, and do this and then click here. Did you see what happened? Never, ever do that. Okay. Let's go for coffee. Now.").

Basically, I have to teach him enough to replace me in case of an accident or corporate re-organization. I've been holding his hand for the past two weeks. He still has trouble talking to strangers on the phone. Sweat starts pouring off his face, which he wipes nervously with some paper towels he keeps by his desk, and then his voice starts to shake, and then he tries to hand the phone over to me, but I refuse. I bet he hates that. I think the manager is getting a bit worried about whether he should have hired him. The manager asked me to write a a performance review. My first reaction was, "But I'm the student. That's your job.'" But if my manager is happy, everybody is happy, so I wrote a (overly) long report with examples and Org. Behaviour jargon that could be cut-and-pasted into some future evaluation.

The kicker is that I happened to see some of the new guy's contract information, and I discovered he's getting paid more than me. But then his job is more technical.

December 9, 1999

That's Why I'm the Student (Part 2)

I got a desperate call at home from the network manager tonight. He needed to do a reverse search on a phone number to contact someone. Ottawa doesn't have a reverse directory in it's white pages. I told him to search on the Internet, gave him some key words to punch in, and a minute later he has the man's name, home address, e-mail address, everything. As he's hanging up, I hear him say under his breath, "I've got to find you a full-time job."

December 15, 1999

Data Slave: I Walk in his Shadow

Work is hell. Yesterday was my first 15-hour day ever. I had a 15-minute lunch. I skipped supper. My mouth was dry from so much talking, and my fingers were twitching from having so much caffeine. At first it was just a regular 8am - 4pm busy day, but then an emergency came up. I was called upon to work from 5pm and on to get some training on a CDMA system in one of the labs. I was to audit the documentation and shadow the system expert, so that one day, if I was lucky, I'd be asked to work late. I expected to be there one hour, maybe two.

Well, the first hour was pretty good. Everything was moving along according to the documentation, no serious problems. In fact, things were going a bit faster than usual. The next hour was really bad. We could have sat around tossing pens in the air and accomplished the same thing. The third hour was pretty good again. We had mentally blocked out the second hour. We were getting on with our lives. And then... death. The software just wouldn't work. I watched the expert try new loads, old loads, combinations of old and new loads -- nothing happened. One of the lab users spent some time watching us while his test cases were being set up ("I like watching the frustration."). By 11:00, we had lost our will to fight, and a half-hour later we gave up. I wrote some last-minute reports and was home by midnight.

But it doesn't end there. I had to be back at the office for 7 am, back in that lab supporting that system. Fortunately, the lab users are night people. They don't start straggling in until 9:30. And it's a good thing, too, because if someone had been there at 7 and had complained to me, "Call p doesn't work," I think I would have lost it, just walked out of the lab like a war-stunned desert wanderer afflicted by heat stroke, and slumped onto a stool in the coffee room.

December 18, 1999

Handler Error

I woke up at 6:39 am. I had booked the 6:40 am flight to Thunder Bay. For a short time, I maintained the illusion that I could make it. I started putting on my pants. I'd skip shaving. I'd have to call a cab, and it takes 20 minutes to get there... oh. So, I called my parents and said I'd be delayed, and then I called Air Canada to get standby tickets. I avoided the $100 fee by not confirming my seat. I was fairly certain there would be some empty seats on TO-TB flight. On the plus side, I had an ample 30 minutes to get ready.

The line in front of the Air Canada booth filled two ticket mazes (those snaky barricades used to compress queues into a small and easily controlled area), plus about 10 meters down the hall towards the Cidle Canadian Airlines booths. There were eight AC tellers, so I was only in line for 20 minutes, and I had plenty of time to enjoy a coffee at the gate.

I had to wait 90 minutes in Toronto. My only worry was that my luggage wouldn't follow me, but a glance at the tags reassuresd me. The line-up for the Thunder Bay flight was long. Another standby passenger was standing at the gate attendant's desk, getting in her face and blocking traffic. I decide to wait patiently. After all, the attendant sets the standby seating on her whim. And I was rewarded with a seat in first class. I had two spacious seats all to myself, two pillows (although one was later confiscated), a nice warm chicken-based meal, free beer, and quiet. I should miss more of my flights.

December 20, 1999

Big City Man Visits Sleepy Town

I'm bored. Everyone has stuff to do -- shopping, work, visiting. But not me. There's nothing on television.

Probably the most aggravating thing about Thunder Bay is the traffic. Everyone drives slowly, and since most roads are two lanes, it's hard to pass people. And it looks like people don't know where they are going or what they are doing -- weaving around in the lane, suddenly deciding to turn right instead of left, making a left turn onto a busy street during the busiest time, entering mall parking lots through the exit lane, and on and on, rant rant rant.

December 22, 1999

Skating at Grandview

For the first time in ten years, I skated (I'm training for the Ottawa canal). A bunch of middle-aged and elderly people were at the rink, too, and an ex-speed skater zipping around with his hands behind his back, and there was a psychiatric patient who looked like the Chicken Lady from "Kids in the Hall." Depression-era music blared from the speakers. I did three 15-minute runs around the Grandview Arena rink. My feet were in a world of pain, and I had to take off my skates after each run. It's worth it, if I can get to downtown Ottawa and back. I only regret not being able to practice stopping, which is the most ego-deflating part of skating. I'll have to get on the canal at night or something.

December 25, 1999

What You've Been Waiting For

As expected, I got few things on my list, the list everyone had been asking for, the annual guide to my wants and needs. It seems the more specific I make the descriptions (sizes, colours, brands, stores, suggested retail prices), the less likely it is that people will go to the trouble of purchasing it for me. On the other hand, I got lots of great clothes, some video games that will require me to perform a computer upgrade (everyone loves that), and a bagel toaster. In my stocking was some chocolate, a can of shaving gel and a pack of razors.

I spent the rest of the day eating.

December 28, 1999

Curl This

The last time I played curling was in Grade 10. I was terrible at it. My teammates started making fun of me. After two games, I quit. So it was with some hesitation that I agreed to play on my brother's curling team at the Thunder Bay Country Club.

I still can't curl. The rock goes too fast or too slow, or curves in the wrong direction. Fortunately, there was a man on the other team who was worse than me, so my bad playing could be considered almost average.

December 31, 1999

Proof

I took the WAIS-III intelligence test today. As my brother was preparing to administer the test, I leaned back in my chair and fell over. Luckily, I wasn't docked any points for that.

From the beginning, I was causing trouble. Some of my answers weren't in the "acceptable" list provided in the marking scheme (e.g. tirade = angry soliloquy). I complained about the U.S. bias evident in the questions, and how testees are punished with low IQ scores because they don't fit in the hegemonic ontological structure. Several times, my brother joked about writing in his notes, "Subject babbling... Subject had to be restrained... Administrator sedated subject..." The hardest section of the test was organizing a random mix of numbers and letters provided verbally from memory, but I scored perfect on that.

When it came time to tally my score, my brother kept saying, "You got xx right here, and that gives you, oh, only 15. And another 15. I think I see a trend." But checking the total against the chart for my age group showed my score was off the scale! That means I'm in the top 2% of the (U.S.) population.

December 31, 1999

What I Did While Waiting for the End of the World

In the evening, I went to a friend's house to celebrate the millennium. I brought beer and chocolate. There was supposed to be a big party, but no-one showed up. We were supposed to go to Old Fort William to watch a fireworks display, but we didn't get around to it. Instead, we watched the super parties around the globe -- Paris, London, Lagos, St. John's, New York -- with a catty CBC host. And I refereed and announced during a heated game of table hockey.

There were absolutely no disasters anywhere. It was so disappointing. Instead, just a lot of feel good news -- Yeltsin retires to a life of boozing, the Indian hostages are freed, and only minor vandalism in American cities.