Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I Started the Day With Underwear

This story that you're about to read, may or may not have been about me. It may or may not have happened today. It may or may not offend you. Let's just say, "You've been duly warned."

I went to Pivotal Labs for lunch where we had a pivot give a tech talk. It was great, you would have loved it. After the talk/lunch I was walking back to the office I'm stationed at a few blocks away. I was outside and maybe a half block from the office when I felt a fart. I was outside, no one was around so I thought "What the hay? Let 'er rip!" This was no ordinary fart though.

This fart, he didn't just exit my anus with a few poo particles to collide with your nose at a later date. No, this fart brought along the entire contents of my bowels for the ride. Now in the past I've had farts that sounded wet, or felt like they might have been more than just gas and I wondered afterwards. This one, I knew right away I had crapped my pants.

I couldn't go to the office and walk around all afternoon with wet shit in my shorts. I looked back at Pivotal thinking I might be able to change there. However, I'd have to account for my return. My apartment was only a 40 minute round trip away, I could go home and waste half the afternoon. I decided to walk a little more in my intended pre-pants-shiting direction and I saw the Metreon! They had a great public bathroom just steps away from me!

After some profuse wipage and careful shoe removal, I got my soiled boxer briefs folded up and then promptly discarded of them. I hope no homeless guys went rummaging through the garbage and thought they had landed a new pair of skivvies. I was poo free, but I knew I was out of layers. If I farted like that again I'd be walking home pantsless or with a brown stain. The rest of the day was very distracting because I was operating comando.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Where I went on my weekend


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  1. Wake up on Saturday, hang out in apartment till 10ish
  2. Head out to Golden Gate Park, eat grilled meat with coworkers
  3. Meet up with the Dickersons and Eileen at the Tea Garden in GG Park
  4. Go walk part of the GG Bridge, explore souvenir shop
  5. Make our way to Fisherman's Wharf, view lazy sea lions eat dinner
  6. Get kidnapped to Elk Grove!!! Play games, drink wine, enjoy good company
  7. Get on AmTrak all the way down to Santa Clara
  8. Walk a block or two, ask front desk of a random Hilton to call me a cab
  9. See "Party Fowl" at the Santa Clara Players Theater
  10. Hitch a ride back to Pleasanton
  11. Ride BART back to The City
  12. Ride a cable car back to bed.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Dude-Backing

This Saturday I went sky diving with the Great Dickersonaians, my brother, and my sister-in-law. It was hella fun, not scary at all, and well worth the $100 you have to lay down. But then, it wasn't really sky diving, it was more like dude-backing where you strap a guy to your back and trust him not to hurt you.

It really is funny how the brain goes just a little dumb. You get pushed out of a plane and you can feel the wind rushing past your face and see the ground getting closer to you, and you think calmly to yourself, "I have never felt anything like this. As long as the chute opens this is going to be awesome." And the instructor spins you around a bit, makes a joke via hand signals, and eventually pulls the cord. And instead of being whipped in to an upright position, you just kind of find yourself gently transitioning from horizontal to vertical. Next thing you know you're landing on the ground, right where you ought to land.

P.S. Matt says he'd dress up as Abraham Lincoln if he ever jumped solo.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

meated: (v) to meat

Me: I met a sandwich today!
Other guy: You met a sandwich?
Me: Yeah, you know, lettuce, tomato, mustard...
Other guy: Right, but how did you meet a sandwich?
Me: Well I just took the roast beef from the cutting board, and put it on the bread.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

More Improv Videos

http://www.youtube.com/rileyj1979 from our last class.

Next show is Tuesday the Wednesday the 19th of May, 8pm. 414 Mason St.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

John Henry

House Season 1, Episode 9. The character John Henry, the best trumpet player around, suffers from symptoms that seem to 'take away [his] air'. Without the use of his lungs, he can't be a trumpet guy. To him, if he can't be a trumpet guy, he isn't anything. He signs a Do Not Resuscitate form - he wants to die. House does resuscitate him, and has to go to court to prevent the plug from being pulled on John Henry. When Dr. House talks to him, he stares House straight in the eye and says:
... I know the empty ring finger.  And that obsessive nature of yours, that’s a big secret.  You don’t risk jail and your career just to save somebody who doesn’t want to be saved unless you got something, anything, one thing.  The reason normal people got wives and kids and hobbies, whatever.  That’s because they don’t got that one thing that hits them that hard and that true.  I got music, you got this.  The thing you think about all the time, the thing that keeps you south of normal.  Yeah, makes us great, makes us the best.  All we miss out on is everything else.  No woman waiting at home after work with the drink and the kiss, that ain’t gonna happen for us.
I could have been standing there in House's shoes. Instead of medicine, it would be fencing. When I say I feel like I don't have an identity, it's because I'm subconsciously looking for 'that one thing' again.  

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Can't Sleep, Blog Instead

General update: got a haircut this weekend - didn't really want to, but also didn't want to appear too shaggy for my brother's upcoming college graduation. This weekend I fly back to Indiana to see him walk the stage. Then next week, he and my sister-in-law will be out here in SF for a week.

Also got new shoes. Still mismatched, brighter than ever, but this time low top slip-ons. Apparently all it takes to make normal Chuck's into slip-ons is a band of elastic cut through the tongue. Comedy is up to 3 nights a week now, with two shows coming up in 3 weeks. I find myself applying the simpler games to everyday life. In the long run I'm hoping it'll scare off the "nice guy" in me and leave a "rich-character" behind.

I generally don't say that I watch TV, but lately I've been watching House. I like it because I identify with Wilson, it's one of the few shows that pulls off having several attractive females at once, it has Hugh Laurie who comes from a comedy background, and it feels like it delves into what makes people tick more than most shows.

Being staffed over at Twitter is still going pretty well. I feel like I've been an effective Pivot for the team I'm on. But I'm also ashamed to say that I broke the help center for an hour and the other pair had to cook up an emergency patch the day I was out sick (I'm going on two weeks fighting a cough), and I may have been responsible for nuking seven days worth of code check-ins in our source control system. They got the history back, that's the beauty of source control, but things like this make me feel like an amateur when I have every reason to be projecting "professional".

Two more cousins are engaged to be married. I think that just leaves me and one other cousin who isn't out of college yet. I know it isn't a race, but can be hard to ignore the feeling that everyone is running past you.

I'm going out to buy a socket set tomorrow. Maybe a new battery for my cordless drill.

One of the things I've been grappling with lately is... there's a word for it... like deciding to buy a fancy phone and wondering if those purchases not only separate me from my fellow man, but from being 'human' altogether. Such as, "Mankind got along without 500 thread count sheets for thousands of years, do I really need them?" I don't have a good answer, because on one hand, I don't need those luxury items, but on the other, to not use the advantages I've been given and earned feels wasteful.