Sphere of Archives

April 1, 2000

Everyone is Laughing at You

I spent all of April Fool's playing "Alpha Centauri," which is Civilization in the future but on a different planet. It is just as addictive as the original, with cool sounds and video, and more dialogue choices that allow one many ways to be a bastard. I played for 10 hours, skipped lunch, skipped supper, and only just got close to conquering the planet. I turned off my computer, and looked out the dark window to reflect. I felt a little hollow inside.

So I went to Starbucks.

April 2, 2000

Row to Nowhere

I bought a rowing machine from a tenant who was moving out of the building. Thirty-five dollars. He tried to push one of those bent hoops that are really abdominal exercise machines. I used the rowing machine once, and now it's leaning against the wall gathering dust. Immediately, I imagined myself being one of those people who spends hundreds of dollars a year on exercise equipment, only to end up selling them at the next yard sale because all I really wanted to do was push-ups and chin-ups. And that worries me, because I'm not even doing that.

April 3, 2000

Recognize the Hell Out of Them

It's time to party... and party... and party. All the work I did and the stress I went through for a bunch of project groups is starting to pay off, in the form of beer and Can-Mex food. Better late than never, I suppose.

Party of the First Part: For the design and coordination work I did on the new lab LAN in January, last week the new Lab Operations manager invited me to a mass get-together at The Lone Star, a Texas-style restaurant popular with people who need to host office parties. I was just one of 32 people involved in the work. I sat across from a bunch of people I didn't know, and didn't even see half the group because of the way the tables were arranged. While the staff paraded around singing loud "Happy Birthday" songs, I sucked back my pint-size Corona and listened to strangers talk shop.

Party of the Second Part: For the hard work the lab operations group put into supporting one of the heaviest labs, yesterday the team was treated to beer and pizza at Le Skratch, a huge pool hall located above Sportchek in Merivale Mall. Unfortunately, the group that invited us never showed up. We ordered pitchers and pizza anyway. The new guy from China had never played pool before. It's hard to train him. After two hours of increasingly humorous instruction, he still couldn't hit the cue ball.

Party of the Third Part: You may have seen the press release. It didn't mention my name. The 1xRTT project made history with the first 3G data call (the "third-wave" of telecommunications). I was the one who set up the infrastructure for the project. The manager for that project took all the credit. But there is this other project group using the same technology but for a different test, and I bailed them out when they gave up trying to do things themselves. That project's manager has invited me and some other contributors to lunch on Friday. He had better show up.

April 7, 2000

Incorporated

Lunch was brutal. It was held at Grace O'Malley's, which appears to be a popular lunch spot with a lot of Nortel people in my building. While the managers sat at one end of the long table, the support people who did the actual work were crowded into the corner at the other end. Wiggling between the wall and chairs to get to the bathroom was a special challenge. Again, there was the token Texan software designer (Mike) drinking water while the Canadians guzzled beer. I thought Mike looked nervous, as if he'd rather be working. He's tall, thin, with a thin beard and thin glasses -- definitely someone who spends a lot of time absorbing gamma radiation.

So I sepnt the entire lunch talking with a couple of people from the envied and hated IS department (they have it so easy). But I never realized how cyncial they were about their jobs and management in general. I had always thought things were wonderful. No-one complained that they had a five-day response time for all but the most emergency requests. They had the senior manager's ear, got all the awards, and they got to take many cigarette breaks with no apparent repercussions. Oh, and now they are being outsourced. One of them was heavy into rationalization, after failing to find a satisfactory job elsewhere. "They can't outsource the whole department," he said with conviction. "I've heard they're only going to outsource 50 percent... for now." He was offered a job under the new lab operations manager, who I think is a nice guy who means well (He's MIS, too; we have so much in common.), but refused because he can't stand him. Now he's trying to pad his resume with UNIX administration. I wanted to interrupt, "Yeah, yeah. What is wrong with my new senior manager?" But I couldn't find the right way to ask it. Instead, I listened to this disaffected software installer/administrator whine about how people have to look out for themselves in this organization, and how opportunities have to be grabbed fast, and how everyone is expendable. Meanwhile, the other computer support guy is leaning back, nodding and dragging on his cigarette.

I don't feel sorry for him. He's an unemotional technocrat, the kind of person who acts polite on the surface while he contemplates and fine-tunes exactly why he despises you. Under the old senior manager, he got an award for team-building in the operations support group, an award he himself admitted he didn't remotely deserve. At that time, I had been working a year at Nortel and hadn't even heard of the guy before he got the award. Two years later, he might be fired and re-hired at a lower salary, and suddenly he's upset with the wild roller coaster of corporate politics. Maybe he should learn to "duck and cover" next time management goes about noticing people. It works for me.

April 10, 2000

Gone to a Better World

My manager is quitting!
He got a job in another department!
He just hired me three weeks ago!
Who's going to want me now?

I'm happy for him. He's going to a far, far better place. Truly, I thought he should have left last year. There were a few well-connected, vindictive senior managers who hated him and made his job a misery. He'll no longer have to worry about them.

But what about Eric? What about his needs? In the worst case, I'll be doing my old boring job, but at a much higher salary. In a slightly better case, my manager is succeeded (he cannot be replaced). In an even better case, a particular lab group hires me for system engineering in the labs. In the best case, they also give me more money.

April 13, 2000

Lunch for the Dearly Departed

Another member of the department is leaving. This one is going to a start-up company in Kanata. The group was unsure about what to give as a parting gift. After two years, we knew little about him, so I was sent to uncover the goods with discretion.

I cornered him in the coffee room. I found out beforehand that he was in a recreational hockey league, so while feigning surprise, I asked him what position he played (LW), what hand he used for shooting (R), his skill level (beginner), his training (none), his favourite NHL team (Senators and Canadiens), everything. And I found out his other passion is buying stocks on margin ("I got a couple of letters about margin calls. They aren't too important, right?"). Now, I was ready to get the gift -- wide hockey stick, hockey tape and puck. I went to Sport Chek that evening. All of the sticks seemed on the short side. I asked a clerk if the stick should come up to the chin or the nose.

I ended up buying a stick with "Lindros" stamped on the side. Does that mean Eric Lindros uses a stick with a blade just like this one, or does he just endorse these kinds of sticks? Or does it refer to the length of the stick or the stiffness? Maybe it's a "collectible" stick, like the MacDonald's Happy Meal toys. In any case, he liked the gifts. After I gave them to him, he started practicing highsticking to the heads of his co-workers.

One department alumnus came to the lunch. He had been hired by my manager to support specific technology in one of the labs. Then one of the managers in that lab offered him much more money and he jumped to the other group immediately. So everyone at the table started to refer to him jokingly as "the Traitor," and told him he better leave before our manager arrives. I had to explain what traitor means to the new hires from China. One of the new people was a co-worker of his in Beijing. They had a great talk for a few minutes. When the new one left for the bathroom, the Traitor asked us, "What's that guy's name?"

April 14, 2000

Don't Step in the Leadership

Every week, I get an e-mail from a vice-president's secretary in a building far, far away. It's their way of keeping in touch. I've gotten in the habit of just deleting them because they usually contain nonsense like the following excerpts:

The door is open, but nobody's in.

April 15, 2000

Handler Error (again)

On the good side, I made it to the airport on time. My father called me at 4:45 a.m. to ensure I got up. On the bad side, it was too dark for me to see I had dropped my wallet in the taxi. I didn't notice until early in the afternoon when I tried to buy a coffee.

My response was quick and decisive. After borrowing money from a friend for a coffee and spending an hour talking, I cancelled my credit card, got a temporary driver's licence, and then I called the Ottawa airport, the Thunder Bay airport, and the Ottawa taxi company to see if they had found my wallet. (The taxi company has it.) Now I'm forced to spend the rest of my holiday mooching off of friends and family.

April 16, 2000

30 Years I'll Never Get Back

I am so old... but I'm over it. I'll never get those years back... but what are you going to do?

April 17, 2000

"You are so McCool !"

Here are some pictures from my friends playing hockey in a recreational league.

1. Kristian Haapa-aho in the box
2. Kristian waits to one-time a pass
3. Attackers crowd Kevin Carlson
4. Defenceman winds up as Kris Ketonen guards the net
5. Kristian races for the puck
6. Two men enter, one man leaves -- Kevin prepares for the shot
7. Kris waits for the turnaround in the neutral zone

Later, we went to a fake Irish pub across from Coyote's -- Finn McCool's. Could it get any worse? All of these suddenly trendy pubs look the same. They all have shiny hardwood floors, and stained glass windows, and brass railings along useless walls, and a couple of Guiness signs, and they are spotlessly clean. And at McCool's, they still play bad American disco music, and they still attract the jock-like cliques from the university (too fat and lazy to play sports, but they wear the backwards baseball caps and snowboarder sunglasses to help in imagining they could, you know, if they wanted to). The service was absolutely terrible, and the food was double the price of anywhere else. It makes me long for the badly mimicked Yankee flavour of Casey's.

April 18, 2000

Movie Review: American Psycho

I have described American Psycho as "Gorillas in the Mist" meets "Wall Street." There is so much to like about this movie: the lead character's empty, news anchor voice, the simplistic pseudo-intellectual analyses of pop music lyrics ("The early Genesis was too artsy, too intellectual for me..."), the alpha male rituals of business card design and restaurant seating.

The only scene that I squirmed at was the chainsaw scene. I used to squirm at the "Scarface" chainsaw scene, too. I think it's the untidiness of chainsaws that concerns me the most. My favourite murder scene has got to be the first one (though it's the second kill), where he offs his competitor because he has a better business card. See it now! Don't wait for it on cable.

April 19, 2000

The Drinking Game

How did I get into this situation? Oh yeah, I was drunk. Sitting in Coyote's with my friends, when three well-fed women stop by. At least one of them knows Scott Shiels sitting across from me. I introduce myself and shake the hands of Nicole, Karen and Christie. Profiles:

• Nicole is a 27-year-old single mother of two (she showed me their photos), with short brown hair and freckles. Her nickname is Mix. Her friends say it's because she's half-native, but Nicole laughs and insists it is not. She has a tattoo of a poinsettia or mutant rose above her right breast and another tattoo on her left side that I couldn't discern.
• Karen knows Scott. It's her birthday today, and she's 21. She looks like a slimmed down Mama Cass, straight brown hair and white skin, oval face, pale eyes. She seemed like the most talkative of the three. By the end of the night, she was drunk and staring quietly into space.
• Christie, 22 or 23 years old, wears her frizzy hair up, so it looks like a large blond explosion. She was professionally dressed, and the most observant. I think she tried at one point to pick up Kris Ketonen, but stopped when someone told her that red heads have small penises.

All three of the ladies spent the night spiking their own beer, smoking, and pointing out and belittling the various jerks, assholes, bitches and freaks that had entered their lives at any time.

At various points throughout the night, Scott would start rubbing my leg with his. Maybe he was sitting in an air draft and was cold. Then Kevin started rubbing my leg, too. That must have been some draft. It was starting to get weird, so I stared intensely at the horrible cover band as they belted out another late-80's super dance hit, and wondering how I got into this situation.

April 21, 2000

The Trinity of Buffet, Baseball, and Bare Wench

The day started with a buffet at the Port Arthur Brasserie and Brew Pub with some friends and some new people I hadn't seen before. By now, everyone has heard of my Wednesday night follies. But the butt of most jokes was a guy named Paul, who roared into the parking lot on a small green motorbike (almost a Moped), wearing clip-on shades. His latest challenge is to become a goalie, and he recently bought new equipment. Later in the day, I would discover why that was funny.

After lunch, we played a quick shoot-em-up video game, and then a few of us decided to play baseball in the field behind Kevin Carlson's house. Suddenly, I became very concerned about the dogs in the area, and how many neighbours conformed to sanitation bylaws. We used a hockey ball, so it didn't travel far. Still, it was easy to pick out the athletes. One guy (Dwayne) could not hit the ball. He couldn't coordinate the action of tossing the ball up and then swinging the bat. After several minutes of waiting, we instituted a three-strikes rule and soon he was out in the field.

Paul was up next, and it was deja vu to some extent. Kevin pitched underhand, but mostly Paul just tipped the ball behind him. I shouted, "Come on, Fullmer," to encourage him.

Then I was up. Dwayne insisted he was a good pitcher, but that must have been before his growth spurt. He pitched high, low, wide. He pitched underhand and overhand, but could not get it near the batting square. When Kevin was up, Dwayne continued pitching with no apparent improvement. Kevin even set up a lawn table to act as a target, but Dwayne aimed for his head anyway. Still, Kevin managed to make some good hits to right field. I ended up doing most of the running, because Paul refused to move. And his goalie career probably won't take off soon. He was using a goalie's catching mitt for practice, but he could not catch the ball with it. The ball would always fall out, or he'd miss it. "It'll be easier to catch pucks with [the glove]," he said. Keep the dream alive.

After baseball, we capped off Good Friday by channel surfing through porn. We caught the ending of thrill-packed art film "The Bare Wench Project". Exciting new catch phrase you can use on the bus: "I'm scared to close my legs. I'm scared to open them." Oscar says, "Don't lose the map to this one!"

April 25, 2000

Some earn training, some are born to training ...

At 8:15 a.m., I got a call from the other half of my department. He was supposed to go on a training course for the rest of the week, but an emergency came up. I would have to take his place. The class was being held on the west side of town, and starts at 8:30, so I could just make it. Well, I didn't want to get back to work so soon anyway.

The training facilities are, in my opinion, luxurious. The common area has expensive-looking Ikea furniture, free coffee, and LAN ports at several locations. There are six "function" rooms (because the word "classroom" caused offense to the engineers) surrounding a glass-walled equipment room where several Passport switches hum to themselves. There are 11 other people in the class. Most are from Nortel, a few are from Bell. The instructor is a former Bell employee. I sat at the chair behind the name tag of my co-worker, and people assumed I was my co-worker, even though he had been present the day before and we look nothing alike. I guess they figured some incredible transformation had occurred during the night.

But the class is interesting and immensely valuable, because this technology will become common in the labs by summer, and someone has to support. Now, that person will be me.

May 6, 2000

"It's not just an apartment.
It's a multimedia extravaganza!"

Some days I just want to hug my computer. Today was such a day. I had grossly underutilized my new machine. The TV tuner, the CD-RW, the DVD, the web cam -- they were just sitting there. Something had to be done.

The first step was obtaining the necessary equipment to complete my high-tech pod. I set aside my puny walkman earphones and bough a good Koss set with a 2-metre cord. I stored my old VCR that only went up to channel 36 and bought a new Samsung. And I bought some coax cable and a splitter to finalize the infrastructure. And I bought some blank CDs.

The second step was "re-structuring" my apartment into "profitable media centres." My desk and the two computers went to the other side of the room by the cable jack. This area will be my on-ramp to the Information Superhighway, where phone, TV, and (possibly in the future) Ethernet unite. And in the corner, the bookshelf, newspapers and stereo form the Information Superdriveway, where I will scheme in solitude. The dining area, aka the filling station, is unchanged. This leaves a sizeable area between the three centres where I can put my rowing machine, which may now be referred to as the tune-up station.

By mid-afternoon, the restructuring was complete. I turned on the TV tuner, flipped to the hockey game. And during commercials I flipped to Canoe for news. And then I started RIPing songs off a CD. It was beautiful.

May 11, 2000

Insufferable Co-Worker

There's one in every group. If you can't think of one in your group, then probably you are the insufferable co-worker. Readers may recall last summer when I insulted a fellow co-worker at a lunch for complaining about sitting in the smoking section of a restaurant, which upset her so much that she left. Now she is sitting across from me, in the cubicle once occupied by one of my friends. I have a hard time maintaining a calm demeanor around her.

On the surface, she is very much like my friend. She talks about her kids, and the crazy stuff that happens to her during her work day. She keeps plants at her desk, too. But what grates on me is her personality, which is a stark contrast to my friend. The insufferable co-worker doesn't smoke or drink or eat meat or swear. She has no interest in hockey and she talks quietly. She doesn't like the interoffice bathroom humour that gets sent around by e-mail. When she argues a point, she repeats the same sentences, but puts them in a different order, and when I finally give trying to make her see my side of things she just nods at me as if to acknowlege to herself that some of her wisdom has been passed to another dumb soul.

And then there is the network administrator, who is finally starting to grate on my jsut as he grates on everyone else. He depends on me a lot for stuff he could do himself. Maybe he thinks it's a compliment that he makes me do half his work, freeing him up to surf Vietnamese beauty pageant web sites. I think the worst part is his hyperactivity, no doubt exacerbated by his pouring seven sugar packets into every cup of coffee.

I have considered asking to be moved to a different cubicle, but I know the manager would reject it. In any case, a new building is being built this year, and we'll be moving there when it's done. Then I can negotiate for a more satisfactory cubicle experience.

May 12, 2000

I Love Myself

A friend has expressed an interest in computer viruses. I am here to help, so I found a whole bunch of web sites offering source code. We were both disappointed that I didn't get the Love bug ("I-LOVE-YOU"). As a friend, he offered to send me a copy so that my system could get infected just like everyone else's.

Her sent me the code, but the script wouldn't run because there were binary "end-of-line" characters from whatever text editor had been used to view it. We were both disappointed. What would Brian Boitano do? So I spent a half-hour or an hour debugging the virus so that it could work. I considered changing the code so it wouldn't harm any files, but decided against it. I had to prove my love.

It all happened so fast, just a few seconds. I was left thinking, "That's it? What about Eric? What about his needs?" I ended up with 1,800 copies of the virus script on my hard drive. Most of my graphic files had been deleted (the family and TKD club photos, the astronomy archive, the porn, no, not the porn!), but fortunately the MP3 files I had spent two weeks creating were left intact. After that (anti-)climax, I was high on adrenaline. I walked to Starbuck's... to reflect.

May 15, 2000

Total Support Where You Need It

This week, I'm carrying two pagers -- one for the LAN, one for the 1xRTT projects. Wouldn't you know, today everything fell apart. Fortunately, it wasn't my fault. Someone put a bad configuration on a router in a lab and didn't tell anyone. It prevented the 1xRTT group from running their tests for two critical days, and it had a weird effect on the LAN. But now I know!

May 21, 2000

Lazy Sunday Morning

This has been a great day for me. I got up around nine and hit the rowing machine. Then I went for a two-hour walk along the canal, from Dow's Lake to downtown and back. It's the second-last day of the tulip festival, and the path was packed with cyclists and joggers. I happened by a lonely group of kids selling lemonade in front of their house ("Can I see your vendor's permit, please?"). I felt a little sorry for them, because their business plan obviously needed more work, especially in marketing, so I bought a 25-cent cup in hopes that they could at least have some venture capital for their dot-com start-up.

When I got downtown, naturally I went to the Second Cup. Looking down the next few blocks, I saw five panhandlers sitting at their staked-out positions on sidewalk corners. In the coffee house, with a muffin and large cup, I sought a table at the back. One of the clerks put on this folky guitar music, which nearly put me to sleep. And then I was back on the street, passing speed.

May 25, 2000

Nullifier

My motivation to work is so low right now. What is it? I've got lots of energy on the way to work, but before lunch it's gone, and the rest of the day is spent checking for new e-mail and waiting for four o'clock. There's nothing on the Web. Holding the mouse is exhausting. "To Do" lists get longer. The insufferable co-workers have moved up to unbearable. I can only get so many cups of coffee before the manager gets suspicious. It comes to me, "Maybe my job sucks. Or maybe I suck. There's a giant sucking sound in work location 17385."

May 27, 2000

Punk Nightmare

It was all a dream. I was finalizing my assault plans on a couple of music stores in order to fill in gaps in my CD collection. I had a mental target list. I imagined myself in the store, carefully picking out discs. I went to the cashier's desk and placed my choices on the counter.

Then I woke up, covered in cold sweat.

June 2, 2000

"It's easy, but I'm stupid."

It's hard to believe, I know, but I spent the morning training the network administrator how to configure a subscriber services gateway. I couldn't have provided clearer instructions, but I still had to hold his hand, practically entering the information for him. When I did this the first time around, I had to do it alone. So, I'm sitting beside him, responding to his repeated queries with, "It's right there in the manual! See? Click here, click here ...", and, "Why are you doing that? The instructions don't say to do that! Aren't you reading the instructions?"

Naturally, I am always surprised when people say I'm good at teaching.

And yesterday, I was helping a designer troubleshoot a virtual LAN (VLAN). Generally, this technology is avoided in the company. The concept is simple, but implementation and administration is confusing. I even did research and brought a troubleshooting guide for a very similar problem to the one the designer had (I'm such a keener). You would think the network administrator would know something about this, but no. Instead, he spent the time pacing around the "beautiful" lab. Argh! I should ask for a raise.

June 5, 2000

A Silent Majority

My manager is taking a survey of what kind of team building event we will have this month. The choices are on a big white board at the entrance to our cubicle section. He started with skydiving, which I'm sure he meant as a joke to coax others into adding more serious options. Days went by and no-one added anything. On Friday, when no-one was looking, I added caber tossing. On Monday, it had three votes, to skydiving's one. When I encountered my manager in the coffee room that morning, I mentioned enthusiastically that the department was going caber tossing. We joked about how the narrow-chested Chinese in our department would handle the competition ("Lift with the legs!").

It got me thinking about what other physically demanding events we could do as a team, since there clearly is a demand for it. A 10-mile hike? Greco-Roman wrestling? Inuit ear tugging? There are so many ways to create that team spirit.

June 6, 2000

Memories of Arcade

Finally, I have Microsoft "Return of Arcade", four of the classics -- Dig Dug, Pac Man, Galaxian and Pole Position. For now, they have replaced Alpha Centauri, and it's a good thing, too. These arcade games provide me with instant gratification, and after I'm sated, I still have hours left in the day.

And then I learned I could get the arcade ROMs and emulators off the web -- for free! I could be playing Tempest, Defender and Qix right now.

June 7, 2000

The Good Listener

The LAN administrator is nervous these days. Trouble at home. His wife suspects he is cheating on her because he has some female pen pals, and he surfs the web for Vietnamese beauty pageants, and he comments loudly when he sees a pretty woman. Little does she know, he's also getting gifts from one of them, but he gave her my address to send them to. He insists the gifts are completely unwanted and unasked for. "The girl doesn't mean anything to me," he says, "But you know me. I want to be friends with everybody."

So they spent the weekend arguing, and it still bugs him, and he turns to me for someone to give mute assent. He says, "Women are like the weather. One day everything is sunny. Then WHAM! Thunderstorm! You never know." I try not to give him advice. After all, I'm not married. I don't know their situation. All I can say is that his wife is probably sincerely angry, and is as worried about their marriage as he is.

But I know he won't listen. He's already in the process of booking a single ticket to some city. He needs a vacation from his wife, just for a week. Everything will be back to normal after that.

June 8, 2000

Essentially cdma2000

I started a two-day course on a new CDMA standard called cdma2000. Who would have thought two eight-hour days discussing wireless digital technical specifications would be so entertaining? I found out the projects I've been working on for the past few months are based on this standard. And I'm learning all about the messaging that goes on between CDMA-enabled mobile phones and the base stations, and the similarities and differences to messaging using the IS-95B standard. And soon this will apply to me, because the Wireless division is setting up a special cell site where I work, and everyone in the building will use a new cell phone instead of their desk phones. Just thinking about it gives me shivers.

June 9, 2000

Sand in the Face

The first day of beach volleyball. As usual, there is no beach, just a sand court on a company campus, surrounded by trees and swarming with black flies and mosquitoes. I entered with high spirits, which were quickly dampened by the people I was playing with. Not enough people had showed up for the recreational league I joined, so those who did show up were playing with another group. I quickly grew to dislike this group. It was obvious we were only playing with them because they allowed it, and they liked to give out orders. One of them spoke to me to give me instructions, but he didn't even address me as "you" or "boy." Instead he issued a gutteral sound to catch my attention. The others were just as bad. "Move over there. Diamond formation!" Yeech.

Eventually, enough people from our group showed up, and we moved to the other court. We poked fun at the other group, yelling "Power Rangers, formation diamond!" and making a goofy stance. And some pretended to be a Susan -- [bump] ahh! [bump] ahh! We're lousy at volleyball, but I think we look good.

June 12, 200

I Want My Special Free Bonus Now !

I opened my mailbox to find a large manila envelope stuffed inside. From Paul Becker? Oh, the Truly Huge guy. This is the package that will change my life, "allowing you to increase your strength every workout and make size gains every week." Rather an anonymous package. The other products I've ordered off the Internet came in clearly marked boxes. Maybe he didn't want to risk creating any misunderstanding with the postal service.

I know you're asking, is Eric crazy? Is this the slow and nauseating slip into unending needs and wants? I admit it was easy to do. With TV, people have to put some effort into the purchase (picking up the phone, dialing the number, giving your name to another human). But, come on, I'm not the kind of person who will buy anything. I know you're also asking, what did I get for $40 US? The contents of the envelope are:

• a Truly Huge Consultation Certificate entitling me to personal consulting services (via e-mail) for one year
• - a FREE BONUS "Protein Bar" recipe. It sounds yummy.
  
  1. mix 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup honey, 1 cup Protein Powder, 3 cups raw wheat germ in a bowl
  2. press into an oblong dish or pan ("Tupperware is nice.")
  3. put in the fridge to chill, then cut into bars
• a collection of 30 "Protein Power" recipes with such names as "Purple Cow", "Cucumber Smoothie", "The Muscle Beach" and "Cherry Amino Tea." Everyone knows about my enthusiasm in the kitchen. I think I'll be making lots of "The Rocky" (Crack five raw eggs into a glass. Stir. Serves one.)
• the Truly Huge brochure (50 pages), with helpful information on training schedules, lifting routines, staying motivated and diet.
• the Truly Huge audio tape "How to Get Truly Huge". Now I have something to listen to in my car. Becker sounds kind of geeky. He probably wears glasses. He speaks slowly, almost monotone, with long pauses between sentences.
• BodyBuilder for Windows v2.1, an electronic log book. Becker was a little cheap here. It's shareware and costs ten bucks to register for a full-featured version.

According to the testimonials on the web site, if I follow the program I should see a noticeable difference in two weeks. If I follow the program. If I start the program.

June 18, 2000

Watch Me Pull a Rabbit Out of My Hat

A special dinner was held last night to celebrate the success of the 1xRTT project. The theme was the Magic of Wireless Technology Labs (WTL). I had the expectation, from previous dinners, that this would be a dry affair with a free bar. For an idea of how uptight the lab denizens are, one only has to read the special e-mail that was sent out what is meant by "casual formal". I had always assumed everyone knew it meant "no sandals".

That afternoon, I played beach volleyball again. I wanted to get some sun before the party, the reddish tinge that indicates how much time I spend in front of the computer. It was a sunny day, so some of the guys had taken their shirts off, revealing beautifully toned beer bellies jiggling of their own accord. Fortunately, there was only one woman present to witness the evil twin of Baywatch, the behind-the-scenes "60 Minutes" version Fox Broadcasting doesn't want you to see.

After volleyball, I got dressed up and arrived at the party a few minutes early. I was the second person to show up. Around 6:30 the crowd starting coming in. Nortel had hired six professional magicians to walk among us. They were dressed in top hats and tails, and performed all sorts of card tricks and illusions until the dinner started. The wife of one of my co-workers was intent on finding the tricks behind the magic. I'll say she was quite observant, but obviously no fun at parties.

There were no assigned tables, so everyone from my department took two tables near the back. Somehow, I ended up with the non-talkative group. One couple new from Beijing spoke mostly in Mandarin with another co-worker. Another couple, from Bosnia, kept to themselves. It's weird. Once again, I was the most talkative person in my group, pushing everyone to have a good time. So, I can't wait until our department's team building exercise, which is a barbeque at someone's house. (Caber toss has been denied!) I don't care what everyone else thinks, I'm bringing my frisbee.

June 20, 2000

"Christine, Eric's being disruptive."

The last two days have been spent in the New Employee Training course. The course provides general information about company history, market strategy, ethics, leadership and communication. Sure, I've already been here for two-and-a-half years, so I probably didn't get much new information out of the course, but it's two paid days away from work. Plus, the company was picking up breakfast and lunch.

The very first thing the class did was go outside and pass a few balls around in a circle -- one. We were told to work together to figure out a way to move the balls to each person like a production line, with certain restrictions. The bossy people (assertive? leading?) took charge immediately and pushed the rest of us around according to some plan. I kept quiet and followed orders, and then I got to partake in the rewards. It was one of those multi-purpose exercises that teaches us the value of leadership, communication and customer focus. I learned things go faster and people are happier if I simply obey.

The rest of the course was like that, except I got to play the grudgingly benevolent dictator for the group I was in, simply because everyone else was either too apathetic or too sugar-addled from the free soda in the break room to take charge. We had to think up a team name and slogan for our group. We spent four minutes staring silently at the table. I finally ordered one guy to write "Nodes" on our chart paper, and someone else decided our slogan should be "We're number one." Sadly, we had the best name and slogan in the room. Our artificial competitors were the Jazzies, the Lightweights ("working at the speed of light"), the High Fives, and four people at Table Six came up with the Four Sixes ("enter slogan here").

The whole two days went on like this. While I cooperated with the trainer/educator, the rest of my group stayed mute or, in one case, took naps.

Eventually we got to the communication game. The whole class is divided into groups, each playing the same game, but each with different rules, and no verbal communication is allowed. And at the end of each playing round, one or two people from each group trade places, to introduce confusion and fun. In our case, we played trump. The whole time, I was the only person to break the communication rule. After the first switch, the new people tried to enforce the rules from their table. There was a silent argument over who won the first trick. Out of frustration, I started yelling. If you're going to break the rules, go all the way. I did not get my mouth taped shut as promised ("Tie me up, tie me down. Please."), but I managed to play into the trainer's hands and look like an asshole at the same time -- mission accomplished.

I doubt I will ever see those people again. Only one person in the room besides me works at Woodline 2. He's a software designer. There's no reason for him to leave his cubicle.

June 23, 2000

East vs. West

The department teambuilding barbeque was today. The host was one of the resident Croatians. Unlike other teambuilding events, everyone showed up for this one. He wore a pink apron over a T-shirt that read "Too tough to die: Croatia". Croatian folk music blared from the kitchen. We sat on the patio and filled our plates from a choice of spicy chicken wings, squid, and beef sausages. There was a large cooler full of Corona. And his wife had made baklava for dessert.

After having our fill of beer, we went to play soccer in the bright, mid-day sun. The teams were evenly split between the Chinese and the Europeans. It was quite a contrast. Most of the Asians were thin, wore shorts and a couple had spiked shoes. The Europeans, for the most part, looked overweight.

The first goal went to the East, but the West scored almost two minutes later. It was clear the East had more skill at this game, so the West had to make it their game, make it more physical. One of the guys -- a short, bald guy who was dubbed Mini-Me -- tackled one of the Eastern players, and they went for a short tumble along the ground. The Eastern captain tripped me, and I feigned a bruised shin. Then I got in a battle with someone else, which ended in my shaking him around and pushing him off the ball. The score remained even throughout, though.

After a couple of hours of running around, it was back to the patio for more beer and watermelon. I'd rank this the best teambuilding event EVER.

June 24, 2000

Burn

More beach volleyball. I arrived on time. Three other guys showed up fifteen minutes late. That's it.

Since we couldn't get a rally going with two-on-two, we decided to invent a new game, the goal of which is to get a good tan. We divided a half-court into four squares (one per person). Service is from outside the square. Only two-handed hits allowed (bumps, volleys). If the ball hits the ground in a player's square, that player gets a point. The first to reach five points switches places with the player who has the fewest points. Simple, n'est-ce pas?

A word about strategy:

1. If you think your tan is getting uneven, throw the game. Get your five points as soon as possible so that you can switch.
2. Don't put too much effort into the game. It's not worth it.

I thought I was pretty good at this game. The sunburn didn't come out until the evening. It just goes to show you shouldn't get cocky playing this game.