Thursday, August 05, 2004

Riding In The Dark

This morning I woke up very early. Well, that isn't exactly true, I was woken up very early this morning. It seems the Little Boy snuck in to bed with us last night. I found this out after being kicked repeatedly. Apparently he was either dreaming about riding his bike, kicking the ball, or kicking the dog. (My vote is for the latter) So about 3:30am I move down to the floor, but never really got back to sleep. At about 4am I decide to stop trying to sleep and just get up. Mostly because I couldn't get the endless loop of "Five little Monkeys Jumping on the bed" to quit playing in my head.

Well, what is there to do at 4 in the morning? I couldn't work because I had left my computer at work. Humm, I know I will go for a ride this morning, I think to myself. Now I haven't ridden my bike at 4am since I was a teenager. I use to get up early and ride for an hour before going to work with Dad. I had even gotten them to gotten him to go with me. We had our mountian bikes and I would go to the local park and race down the stairs, and then try and race back up them. (We never made it back up to the top of the stairs)

After a shower and getting dressed, I head out to the garage and adjust and fit my new helmet (The dog ate my other one) and got on my bike. Okay, I am ready to go, I decide not to do any hill climbing as those streets don't have any lights. So I start riding and I notice how quiet it really is. I had forgotten that riding at that time of the morning is so nice. The sound of the pressurized tires (110 psi) rolling along the asphalt. Birds just waking up, chirping as if to say good morning to the day. It's interesting how with the lack of light your other senses really come alive. The smell of the bakery down the street, of the trees, and flowers. Riding through some sleepy little neighborhoods, seeing the occasional person turning on the kitchen light to make coffee.

It really gave me a good outlook for the day. I got myself home, and had some breakfast. (I almost never eat breakfast before 10am), watched the news and got ready for work. Driving to the train station, and waiting for the train, I had a poetic narrative of the morning going in my head, and I wanted to write it down. However I didn't have an pen in my bag, so the revelations of the morning are gone, and I am settling back in to work.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

The Tale of two stalls

I am a guy of average height. I don't consider myself to be extremely tall, but not short either. Lately however I have notice a trend that need discussed. You see in the restroom at work we have two urinals. (I know the post has gone in the toliet by the second line). For those of you who don't know about the two urinal configuration, they are set at different heights. Usually the one on the left is a foot lower then the one on the right. It is your basic short guy, tall guy configuration. Being that I am about 5'11" using the tall guy urinal is my right. Why, well because the short guy urinal makes anyone over 5'8" feel like they are peeing on their shoes, not a terribly good feeling. Now that I have set the ground work lets discuss this disturbing trend.

Almost every time I go to the restroom there is a short guy at the tall guy urinal. Some of these cases have  been extreme, as in the short guy is tippy-toeing to reach the tall guy urinal. Now, I don't care what kind of short guy neopolen complex you have, if you are a short guy, use the short guy urinal. I am not willing to pee on my shoes to make some short guy feel better about himself. Look if you are a short guy, just accept that you are close to the ground the some of us. There is nothing bad about that. Short guys don't have as far to fall and there are some very interesting advantages as far as eye levels and the opposite sex. Relish being a short guy. Be short and proud! Be short and proud and use the short guy urinal.

So you are asking yourself, what is the height requirement to use the tall guy urinal. Since it isn't like disneyland having a sign with a "you most be this tall to ride this ride", I have done some informal polling and it seem to be the concensus among most average height guys that 5'8" and up can use the tall guy urinal, while 5'7" and down should use the short guy urinal. Now you are asking yourself, why in the world did he write about this. Well, It needed to be done, and being that guys don't talk in the restroom (it's an unwritten rule) it needed to be somewhere guys feel comfortable talking about this stuff. Which would be anonymously on the internet.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Where's the tech

So you have probably noticed that I haven't had any recent post here or at twocsharpguys on any techie stuff. I know I have a few that can be called techie, but I mean the post that explain a problem and the source code I used to solve it. Those post always garner the most visits from the search engines. So why haven't I done any...cause I don't feel like it. Well that and I haven't been doing much coding lately. We have a really big project coming up. We are converting home banking platforms. With this there are lots and lots of meetings. In fact I am sure that we will have meetings about meetings. This always reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon I read, it said that with any subject or project that requires more than five meetings, then the meetings become more important then the project that the meeting was called about in the first place.

Now with this big project looming in the near future, don't you think I should be getting to know the new system. Familarize myself with the code base? Me too but, that's not what I am doing. I'm doing a bunch of "back burner" projects. Which leads to my next question, if they are "back burner" projects, why are they the first on my plate over the HB conversion. Anyhow most of these projects are server software configurations. Not terribly hard things, but terribly time comsuming.  In other companies I worked for, we web administrators to do these things, but being a Sr. Web Developer, in a small IT department means that you get to wear many hats. Todays hat should be bowler I think! 

Monday, August 02, 2004

Monday Morning

This morning I hit the snooze bar 4 times, and my alarm clock is on the other side of the room. Now that is pretty tired. I get myself up, showered and shaved and hug and kiss my Beautiful Wife. Its one of those days that you just want to stay in bed. Its one of those days that you want to call in sick even though you aren't really sick. Anyhow get my stuff together and walk to the train station. I walk kind of slow, since I didn't expect to catch the 7:21am train. Its August 2nd and I still need to buy my august monthly train pass. So I get to the station at 7:19 and the train is still there and I am kind of surprised. I figured it will leave any second, as I walk up to the ticket vending machine. There is a metrolink "Ambassador" standing there helping people. As I walk up I see two people per machine, so this makes me think that I am right, I will catch the next train. As I get close two people walk away from the machines, and one woman tries the second machine because the first one isn't taking cash. The Ambassador asks me if I am using credit card, I say yes, and walk right up to the first machine. I do my order (there is about 5 buttons you have to press in the correct sequence to get your ticket/pass) and it goes through in record time. I mean I had my pass in like 30 seconds. So with pass in hand I walk right on to the 7:21 at 7:21 and the doors closed behind me. I really couldn't of timed it any better.

So why did I write a post about catching the train? Well, its because I have been in this whole running late and trying to catch the 7:21 and missing it. I would power walk to the station, rush out of the house and miss it. Today, I figured, there was no way I was going to catch it, so might as well not rush and what happens? I catch it with 10 seconds to spare, and had to buy my pass. Maybe this is going to be a good monday.