Evil Otter

I now own an entire company

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:00:17 GMT

Sierra Quebec Uniform Echo Alpha Kilo Yankee Charlie Lima Echo Alpha November
Sierra Oscar Foxtrot Tango Whiskey Alpha Romeo Echo Lima Tango Delta stop

Happy 08/08/08 everyone :-)

An auspicious day, I now own my own company.

Of course, there's still a slew of paperwork that'll need to be dealt with, and bills to pay.
But as of now I can officially start singing for my own supper.

Yay!

stupid, expensive, mistake

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:28:00 GMT

I've lost my helmet and gloves.

I've been riding my bike, since my car is in need of repairs I can't afford right now. (I got stopped the other day for having both a taillight and a headlight out. I hadn't even been intending to use the car that day...)

I went to (my co-worker) Brian's birthday party last night, at Rasoi in the Mission. Mmm, tasty. Since smoking and riding don't go together, and since I still haven't yet quit, when I got home I wound up sitting on the front stoop smoking a cig before I went in. I put my helmet down on the steps.

This morning when I went to leave the house, it wasn't where it normally is. I searched around, but can't find it.

Thinking back, I don't remember picking it up. My money is on the fact that someone else does. Quite profitable for them, no doubt.

But now I need to cough up hundreds of dollars (which I can't really afford right now...) to replace my helmet and gloves, and I only have my own stupidity to blame.

sigh.

First day back at work.

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:52:37 GMT

And in a variety of ways, the first real day of the new year.

I didn't smoke a single cigarette today! A minor triumph considering that that hasn't happened in months now. 2007 wasn't a great year in that regard - I went from smoking again, a little, in the early part of the year dealing with moving etc. to smoking over half a pack a day, more than I'd ever smoked before. It's definitely time to put a stop to that.

Work is putting an interesting spin on where I'm at - we're basically abandoning the code base I've been working on, and investing myself into, for years. For a while now we've had a parallel project to work on the next generation of the technology that drives the product, and for most of that I've been stuck holding the baby - most of the crisis response, maintenance and development on the stuff we have shipped and which is in production now has wound up being my responsibility while others worked on the newer stuff. In a twisted way though, that was fine with me since in so many ways it was more my baby than anyone else's.

It's still a bittersweet time though, to reach the point of inflection where we suspend new development on the project which has been my focus for years, and instead embark upon working on the new project. À bientôt, "Mountain View", you'll be missed. Bonjour, "Tahoe", and welcome to the new year...

sfbrandyn lent me a book, The Artist's Way, which he thought would be helpful to me. I suspect I'm going to get a lot out of it. While I haven't started in on the 12 week course as yet, I've read the first few chapters. Two things fell out of that so far; firstly the realisation that I've pretty much entirely stifled my creativity. I'm not even sure how it happened or why, but during these last couple of days of introspection it became abundantly clear. sfbrandyn used, iirc, the words suffocate and smother in a different context recently and while they stung, necessarily they did so because they resonated. But however I may have erred to have stifled our relationship, much more significantly and more thoroughly I have erred against my self and stifled my own creativity.

The other thing I've taken away from the book so far is one of the requisite daily exercises, the 'morning pages', namely to write three pages stream of consciousness each morning without fail. As a meditation it's designed to weed out and liberate oneself from the inner Critic. It was reflecting on that which led me to realise my inner Critic is in overdrive and hence how deeply I've become beholden to it. It was an interesting exercise, helpful in shaking out some of what's been occupying me for the last few days before I embarked on a day at the office. I definitely realised that it's been a while since I've written that much by hand in one sitting. But all in all, I'm very curious to see how this plays out as a new practice for the new year...

This evening, at Brian's MovieNight, we watched "Scotland, PA" an intriguing, quite amusing and somehow oddly compelling retelling of 'The Scottish Play' set in a mid seventies hamburger stand.

sfbrandyn and I had talked about maybe going out to drink and play pool tonight, but the honest truth is that while I kept my composure throughout the work day and the movie (without the aid of any cigarettes!) I wasn't up to being out and about. I wound up coming home and cleaning up my desk, office - because it'd long passed 'bad feng shui' territory, through 'here be dragons' and on into 'oh my god if I don't do something about this place soon I'm going to explode'. Holy cow I have too much crap in my life...

Anyone want some Stuff? for the most part, free to a good home... anyone? Bueller?

New Beginnings

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:09:04 GMT

So it's been years since I've posted anything resembling a journal here, but the new year seems an auspicious time to resume writing a journal. So first off, let me say

Happy New Year!

A time to look forward perhaps, though what I have to look forward to seems at the moment to be a lot of work; Life is going to get crazy at work for a while, since we have dealing with another company that's going to involve a lot of all-hands-on-deck focus to pull off. But also, I have a lot to do to get me life in order - it looks increasingly likely, perhaps bordering on foregone, that I'll have to leave the country in May when my visa expires - and there's a lot to be done before then. As a random example, there's still a pile of boxes in my office that I haven't unpacked since I moved last spring...

But right at the moment, I'm mostly looking back still. There were many things I'd intended to get done last year that fell by the wayside. Getting back in touch with friends is the one whose dearth I most regret.

sfbrandyn, my wonderful preoccupation of the last six months, and I broke up a couple of days ago. While it's probably for the best, I still have a knot of emotions sizzling away inside grieving for the loss of possible futures.

Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we would do

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.

Those were the days, indeed. Thank you, Pup

In the meantime, I'm hatching plans for the new year. A time of introspection. Evil V2.0 is in development... Stay tuned for more, I'm sure.

To all my friends, I'm sorry I've been away. You've been missed. Drop me a line and let's catch up.

with love and best wishes to all in the new year,

otter