Look underneath, already
Blog Posted by kitt at 13:36 on 12 August 2005
On Wednesday night, Kris and I went with Heather, Megan, Megan, Heather's friend, Warren, Kate, Beth and Chris to see Wicked, the musical. The musical is based on the book Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, a copy of which has been sitting on my desk for, oh, several years now. The tragedy of that statement becomes apparent if you realize the book is actually a loaner from Kris' friend (and my ex-classmate) Eric Newman, who loaned Kris the book for me, and has since left Oracle and no longer works with Kris.
Must read loaner books faster.
Must read...
The show itself was entertaining. We had fairly good balcony seats (off to the left, but with few people in front of us) and the audience was amazing! Lots of young people, some children, mostly high school girls and college women out with their friends. For a Wednesday night, the place was packed. Well, for Friday night, it would have been, too.
Thankfully, Heather was wise and gave me an aisle seat (need to be first to the restrooms!), but I thought I would be wise and use the restroom before the performance.
Which brings me to this open letter.
Okay, ladies, listen up.
When you are in a public restroom, and you are waiting for a stall, if a line forms behind you, do us all a favor, will you?
Bend over or squat down, and look under the stalls.
Yes, you can do this.
No, we won't laugh.
As a matter of fact, our bladders will thank you. Especially if you find an empty stall (you know, the ones with no feet under them) and use it.
If you happen to be in a tight, gossamer dress that will split if you were to bend over to look under the stall, then for heaven's sake, ask the next woman to do it.
But use those empty stalls!
There were, once again, empty stalls because no one bothered to look under the doors to see if they were occupied. I don't get it. How freaking hard is it to look under the doors? Look, dammit, look!
On Wednesday, there were 3 empty stalls (of 12). When I realized there were three, I waited until there were two women in line in front of me (neither bothered to look), then went into one of the empty ones.
The other two can find their own empty stalls.
My bladder's full.
Knee-deep in Java
Blog kitt decided around 23:32 on 11 August 2005 to publish this:I'm knee deep in Java for the first time in a year and a half. Much to my surprise, it's interesting. And even more surprising is that I'm able to follow the client's environment setup. Mike purchased a new development system (Windows XP, bleh), and setting it up has been a bear, but I have to think that's more because of the OS, and less because of the development environment.
The only issues I've had have been not recalling all the setup steps before hand. Instead, I'll do a step, look at the results, realize, oh yeah, I forgot this other step, adjust it, and keep going.
Well, that and the firewall blocking each and every system request. After about an hour, I gave up and just disabled the thing.
So, yeah, it's nice to be able to make progress with the development environment I struggled with years (5 years!) ago.
Of course, Kris can fix any of my problems in five minutes.
Five minutes!
Letters to My Children: Lose the "I can't"
I'm not sure where you picked up the phrase that annoys me more than, "Where's it at?" but I do know that I don't like it, and you need to stop saying it.
What am I talking about?
"I can't."
You started using that phrase a few months ago, and it is completely false. You're telling me that you have decided that you are not going to succeed when you say this to me. But, you say this before you have even tried.
Child, there is absolutely no way you have the knowledge or experience to decide beforehand if you are capable of the action I have requested you attempt. Allow me this moment to be the adult here. Allow me to impart my will upon you. And allow me to insist that you try anyway, even if you believe you can't.
Allow me to say, "You can."
When you're around me and I hear you say, "I can't," and then I insist you try anyway, what happens? Yes, you succeed. You managed to do what you say you cannot do. Sure, you may have to try several times. Sure, you may not completely succeed, but you manage far more when you try than when you don't.
But, you don't need my insisting you try.
For some reason, common to many victim-mentality people in today's blameless society, you have decided to give up before you started because things are "outside your control" or "too hard" or "not possible."
Yes, many things are outside your control. Your genetics? Outside. Who your biological family is? Outside.
The color of the sky? Well, that one is debatable.
But choosing to attempt to do something is well within your control.
There will be many, many, many times in your life when someone else will tell you, "You can't." You can choose to believe them or not. There will be many times when the task at hand indeed looks impossible.
But if you give up before you've even started, it will be impossible.
So, listen to your mother, if only just this once.
Stop saying, "I can't."
It drives me nuts.
The restoration of Peterson fields
Blog Instead of being asleep at 23:40 on 6 August 2005, kitt created this:We started the restoration of Peterson Middle School North Fields today. We knew about what we needed to do to make these fields playable for Regionals at the beginning of October. We knew the task might be daunting. We knew we needed lots of man power. And we knew it would be hard.
What we didn't know, however, was that we would find unexpected luck with the water supply, or how many little things can add up to a whole-lot-of-delay.
Today started off in the usual disorganized fashion of too many things to do, not enough direction and being unsure of what we need to do.
We arrived at the fields with 210 gallons of water from my house in the back of Doyle's truck. Although I thought I had gathered the tools we'd need to do our work, I soon realized were missing pretty much every tool we needed. We had a shovel (we needed 4); we had a wheelbarrow (we needed dirt), we had water (we needed pressure).
to be continued ...
Still, they're not coming
Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 20:45 on 5 August 2005I'm not sure what to write about.
I could write about ballet and Billy on my birthday. Or about Kris' parents coming out and Bob helping me finally finish (well, get really, really close) the main bathroom.
I could write about how I have the equivalent of bed sores on the back of my legs from sitting in one place for four days in a row trying to finish up a project, only to have the client angry at me for still not finishing. Of course, that story would have to include the arguments (discussions?) about what "finished" means.
Or about how I managed to disappoint both Bharat and Sandie on the same day. And how painful that was.
Or about how I managed to hit 3 of my known 4 migraine triggers (disrupted sleep patterns, caffeine, heavy exercise, and hormones - aspartame doesn't count because it's a guaranteed migraine, not just a trigger) and managed to not get a migraine - amazing!
And there's the story about visiting Lisa for Potlatch, and how it links so nicely to the conversation with Paul and Scott and Brad. Or that Lisa is coming to visit!
Or how about the blogher conference last weekend.
Or the Stanford Classic games I played on Sunday, and about how I didn't kick the opponent. I didn't, oh joy, I didn't!
There's how Bella escaped from the yard yesterday and Kevin asked, "Am I a retard?" for leaving the side gate open for three hours. Or Annie escaping today, despite Kevin's attempts to look out for the two dogs.
And, then there's how I haven't run in a week. Did I mention the bed-sores-like issues on the back of my legs?
Yeah.
Or how about how I've lost the last week? Working 13-16 (billable) hours a day means the laundry didn't get done, the dishes didn't get washed, the rooms aren't straightened, and blogs aren't written.
I almost want to cry. Yet, I'm too busy to do so. When I slow down, I think okay now I can cry. But the tears aren't coming. I don't know why they aren't, they're usually here by now.
But, still, they're not coming. Strangely enough.