Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

Today I finally managed to prevent history from repeating. For the past two or three weeks I kept on thinking of stuff I needed to do before and after work. The odd thing is every single time I thought of something I'd make a mental note to remember it. Then I'd just forget it. I'd get to work or get home and realize how stupid I was for forgetting, and then... nothing. I'd not bother making a note to remind myself the next day.

Self defeating really, I know my memory sucks when it comes to a lot of stuff, why I don't make notes is things is beyond me. I guess I just figure it's a waste of paper and I'd lose track anyway. Making notes electronically doesn't work for me either since it's too slow and I never have the method for input readily available.

So the bottom line? Well, yesterday and today I broke out of it. Not sure why but I finally remembered to bring the Silk coffee creamer from the fridge at home into the one at work. Lame? Yes, but it's a perfect example of the crap I forget on a daily basis. In this case I bought the stuff over a week ago, and every day I'd arrive at work and forget it and slap myself mentally for being a dumb ass.

How to combat this mental block is beyond me. I just figured I'd finally remember to write about this sort of stuff instead of thinking, "oh I should make a note of that on my blog" then never doing it.

1. They're all sold out.
2. I read the fine print, AT&T is bonkers, and I'm not paying $500 for a phone that'll be replaced in a year.
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iphone-info.jsp

Yeah, screw that. Shame really, since having used the iPhone for a good hour I must say it totally kills my BlackJack II which is running Windows Mobile 6. I guess I still have the 6.1 update to look forward to though I imagine I probably will be seeing the v3 iPhone by that time and come March will grab one of those .

 

I think this must be one of those moments for me where things come together nicely and I just kinda chill about life and live for enjoying everything. I'm not too sure how many hours I've been working since I started my job, I'm not too keen to figure it out either. All I know is that it's probably over 60 a week if you count at home time on the computer reading up, writing, doing email, you name it. I'm feeling like I'm getting loads done and despite having to wind up again to the normal level of multi-tasking that's required I honestly think I'm getting a lot done. At some point it's going to have to calm a bit since I can't keep up this pace. I don't think there's any reason I can't get a little more economical with my time though and gradually balance stuff out.

Speaking of which, damn, do I need to get back to the gym. I've been maintaining my weight but I can already tell I'm losing some of the tone I had gained just by not working out for 2 months regularly. I do miss going to the gym for an hour a day, it's an awesome stress relief when others don't come as easily, oh and gaming isn't much of a relief sometimes. At least not when I get my ass blown off by some punk kid yelling out racist comments.

The only thing I really dread at the moment is the commute. I know some people have crazy commutes at close to 2 hours or more. For me though, if I'm in the car for more than 30 minutes each way I start feeling like there's better things to be doing with my time than sitting in the car waiting for people to learn how to merge.

Despite all the great little things that come with working for the jolly green giant that is Microsoft, I don't really think my team nor my review would take kindly to me suddenly deciding to cut one more car from the road by working from home. Meanwhile it does seem like I've been in the new role for quite some time, in reality it's been 3 months, not 3 years... unless I count contracting time.

One thing I seem to very poorly at is having a good idea of how much time I'm going to actually have available. I mention this because I had intended on chronicling the initial year or so of actually what it means to be FTE. In some ways I guess I've not really failed since my writing has been sparse that in itself is a good indication of what life is like in year one.

I'm a little biased in my perspective and experience as well having been around here a little while, I can't begin to imagine how much that has actually helped me built up momentum.

Considering it's now going on quarter past 2AM, I'll quit rambling and go to bed.

Well it's crazy how quickly things can change. Only two months have gone by since I wrote about the so called quarter life crisis that I feel I've been going through. In that time I've sat and thought, a lot, and I've still not really come to a firm gut feeling on the subject. Maybe I'm not supposed to and that's the entire purpose in life anyway.

One hundred day breaks which Microsoft contractors are required to take after a year of gracious service have become a total love hate thing for me. I love that it's like a paid vacation sort of. I hate the struggle to pay bills. I love that I can get stuff done. I hate that I don't get enough done. I love the time to relax and think. I hate that after that's done I can get bored. I've heard full time employees (FTE) that go to contracting praise the decision as the best thing since MSFT's closing price xmas '99. Meanwhile contractors, myself included, can complain like mad knowing the income and benefits could be better plus for some there's always the hope a FTE position will open up.

With that said, I guess I've not felt one way or the other about the direction I've been taking lately. The best I can do is just go with the flow like always, kick back relax, and just do whatever my gut says is right for me in this moment.

On January 3rd from noon till around 3:45pm I let God roll those cosmic dice as I entered into my interviews for a FTE position at Microsoft (yeah that sounds ominous doesn't it). First off, I was expecting the interviews to last a lot longer, I've done a full 8 hour interview at both Apple and Microsoft before, so this seemed short. The questions all felt straight forward and I think I did an okay job of staying relaxed and actually enjoy the entire process. Since really it should be enjoyed and experienced so that regeardless of outcome I can learn from it. Oh and it certainly helped I had a 40oz water bottle filled and refilled, water == moist mouth and calmness. Though, I will say, it's a good thing I had a chance to use the loo. One thing that did stick in my mind is that early on I was asked what my 1, 5, 10 year plan was. Geez, what an open question, you want to give your honest answer but want to make sure the answer you give gets you the job as well. How to word it, how to make it right. Then later, in my closing interview I was asked if I wanted to revise my answer since I've had some time to think about it. Well crap, was this a chance to correct an answer they weren't quite looking for? Who knows. Maybe I'll get to ask at some point. But the point I was going to make was that when this question was asked twice I didn't even really think about my previous post or thoughts regarding all that. Maybe my brain just kicked in and without consciously realizing it I verbalized exactly how I felt about my next 1, 5, and 10 years. I really don't know about the next 10 years, seems impossible for me to visualize at this point in life. I have an idea of where I'd like to be so long as I continue down the road I'm now. So yeah, I'll go with that for now.

Five days later I got a voice mail that started my neurons firing with analysis a couple hours after that I got a reply to my email. Just like that at 2:56pm, definite direction... Interviews went well and I was being offered the position. Like my original offer to come up and work with the eHome team, I think I took about 14 seconds to make a decision. Two days later I got everything in writing and finished up my side of the paperwork. Right now I'm just waiting for the 28th to come by and the real stuff to kick in then.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess after I've settled, I'll feel like the entire experience, and the 13 years leading up to this point is akin to falling in love. Or maybe that's just the romanticism coming out in me. What I'm trying to say is that it seems like so many things, like falling in love with the right person, is a struggle that has no end in sight. After that moment where everything clicks into place looking back in hindsight one might think, "well that wasn't so bad".

Maybe in 10 years I'll be doing something completely different, maybe I'll be completely embedded into the road I'm currently paving, who the hell knows. Right now I'm definitely feeling energized and have a renewed sense of enthusiasm about everything. Yeah, I'm still a cynic, but heck, maybe even that will change.

As is finding humor in old comments from others...

Talked to Bryce of the most awesome band ever, Instant Winner... And he was pointing me to some crap about his band.

"Insant Winner? Bah! Ask anyone in the area and theyll probably refer to them as Instant Bizkit or Instant Whiner. Shitty Rap - Metal with horns, and they only attract preppy ass little highschool whores, best band my ass."

So I started checking out crap from my past. First thing that came to mind was the awesome comments I got after Dom slashdotted my amazingly long winded review of the PMC. I was called a smug little prick, and people even thought then that it was a grand Microsoft scheme and that I wasn't a real person. And that I was a huge Apple hater. Oddly enough I now work at said company. And even more odd I almost worked for Apple on the iPhone. But then again, they didn't exactly hire me now did they. Oh and I guess technically I work for Volt not Microsoft anyhow.

But going further back in history. Back to the days of cj8309@telis.org. My first email... There's this gem from the alt.tv.star-trek.voyager newsgroup.

I both hate and love the fact that when I'm old and grumpy there'll be these greast pieces of information out there just floating. God save me if I ever get into politics or become famous.

 

Well, where does one start? First off the Internet really is endless. By the time I finish writing this diatribe there'll be another 1000 pages of content out there. There'll be a billion more forum posts, and trillions of instant messages sent. At which point does it become too much? At which point is the value added go down so greatly it becomes useless?

We've got Google, we've got Desktop Search, but what we don't all seem to have is an endless supply of brain capacity for all this information. At one time I remember this conversation with my gramps. He really didn't understand what I meant when I said I wanted to store everything and anything and never delete anything off the computer. I explained that because of the way I can do stuff on the computer I can access anything I want at any given time, it'd be a bit like Data in ST:TNG but just without the immediate access after thinking about it.

The problem I've encountered though is that through the desire to have all this information (for what reason I don't know), to have all this music and multimedia content (I don't even get through all of it); I've totally lost any real meaning in all of it. I've got emails since my days of dial up, chat logs since before chat logs even existed or MSN IM even existed for that matter, pictures from just about every point of my life, and more music and movies than anyone could possibly care to watch. But in all this "stuff", the one problem I see is that I lately I spend more time organizing, categorizing, and filtering the content than I do consuming it.

Desktop Search and Google has helped find what I'm looking for, but my personal content still needs to be tagged, this is especially true with music.

Maintaining this archive of information isn't cheap either. I've got over 1.3TB of data just sitting, collecting random magnetic waves in a server in a closet. This server is probably consuming at least $12/mo in electricity, if not more since during the summer months it can get to 99° in the office so it needs to be cooled. To keep this blog and all my information on the web I spend another $100/mo on a second Internet connection to have a static unfiltered IP.

It's also a huge headache and burden, someone like me tends to over complicate it as well. I need to make sure the data is secure so I do RAID-5 and have it all centrally stored. To save on multiple servers I have one to do everything, so this server acts as my file server, media hub, domain controller, active directory master, Exchange front and back end, SQL server, you name it this server does it.

I'm not sure if it's a total anal retentiveness or what, but this stuff just ends up taking up too much time and getting it all working is a big pain in the ass.

So I spend even less time enjoying everything, less time getting out doing stuff outside the apartment, and find my days are never long enough.

The one catch-22 in all this though. I've found that today nearly all my friends, almost every one of them except for the few I work with, I've met through the Internet. So it's probably like 98% of everyone I communicate with about life on a regular basis at this point I've either neither met in person or only met them in person after communicating for some time over the web. A part of me finds this interesting since well that's the way things are now. Another part finds it disturbing, though I guess it wouldn't be so bad if more of the people I considered close friends online lived in the same neck of the woods physically. Sadly it even seems like people I know who are local, well, I end up communicating with them more online than I do face to face.

I guess I've lost my point in all this. I suppose my main thought was, what has this all gotten me? How much of all this technology do I really use, how much do I really need? How would I really feel if I just gave it all up?

Will be returning in more ways than one on October 9th, 2006.

While this piece of music has no lyrics to quote I feel the need to point it out anyway. Specifically this album. I converted it from FLAC and it's absolutely beautiful sadly there's a couple minor flaws so at some point I'll need to get the CD and re-rip.

Getting back to the point though. Having listened to Beethoven's 9 Symphonies as conducted by Harnoncourt and Karajan I honestly think this one done by Gardiner is one of my most favorite. Akin to his other performances these somehow feel as if they were being performed with Beethoven himself conducting. At some point I imagine I'll have I'll three so I'll be able to enjoy any whenever. For now this remains right up there at the top.

I'm not really sure what it is about this one movement in particular that just hits that spot. There seems to be a recurring theme to pieces that catch my ear. There must be something to it which I don't understand. Sadly I lack the real depth of knowledge to fully describe what it is I'm hearing musically. The easiest way for me to explain it would be to say that it's the extremely simplistic intricacies that just make me stop and envision something rather magical. It's as if everything just comes together and in those few moments' time stops and I'm in those moments' in music. Yes it's all rather heavenly and clichéd but it's what I have to describe it all.

There's layer upon layer in many musical pieces and unfortunately they're hard to find these days. While pop music can be complex and can reveal new tid bits after multiple repeats it's just not the same as hearing a specific instrument make a clearly defined noise you didn't quite hear the first time. Or having your spine tingle the first time you hear that crescendo turn into the ultimate climax to which there can be no opposition.

Ludwig van Beethoven: 9 Symphonies Disc 3: Symphony No. 6 in F major ("Pastoral"), Op. 68: Allegretto (Shepherds' song. Joyous thanksgiving after the storm)

Finally went outside to get the mail this morning. It being boxing day and all. Sadly I think UPS is still taking their sweet time with my replacement Hitachi HDD. In the mail though in addition to another 7 movies from Netflix, I received a statement from BofA for a credit card I cancelled a month ago. Apparently there was a periodic finance charge at some point after I already closed the account, who the hell knows. So I call up, go through their really stupid voice system, end up just saying customer service to get a human. The recording says their branch offices are closed on Monday and will be open tomorrow. I think crap, does this mean they'll hang up now and I'll have to call back tomorrow at work?

Nope, I get through, talk to the lady and just give my details, say that I received a statement today for an account I paid in full and closed a month ago. I let her discover the finance charge. She doesn't say the amount or anything but just says I'll go ahead and remove that to close the account out permanently. Fantastic, Ferris powers work again. This time to the tune of $7.33 . Sure it's only seven bucks but under Corey's Law no little amount goes unnoticed. It all adds up, hence why the Law continues to work.

Though besides the point, I'm curious why the finance charge was at the cash rates not the purchase rates since I've not done any cash advances or anything of the sort. Oh well.

Shame the same sort of things don't happen with women I meet.

I don't mean physically dead or emotionally dead for that matter. Brain dead just about sums it up. I had started writing about all the random music that's popped in my head and what not that I've spotted little bits of being borrowed in an ad or another song or whatever but I ended up just hitting CTRL+A then Delete. Maybe it's diet, maybe it a big change of plans, or the reasons for the change, or maybe everything else. On one hand I'm feeling great on the other I keep having this nagging feeling in the stomach, total opposite of butterflies one could say. I think I'll just take a little bit, a short hiatus if you will, before I finish what I was going to write.