So Sergey, the dev team leader gave a talk a while back and one of the topics was some of the requirements to being a PTS dev. This captured my interest rather quickly. I don't have an over burning desire to be a PTS developer, but they are very literally cream of the crop so whatever they consider minimum requirements to pass an interview is of intense interest to me. Well, Sergey requires that any candidate be able to mathematically formalize and prove the correctness of an algorithm. That isn't quite the same thing as performing big 'O' analysis. Rather, it requires expressing precisely what an algorithm does. What the state any related module is in before the algorithm is executed (the invariants?), the various changes that will occur, and the state after the algorithm has been executed . . .

Well, duh!!! Another way of putting it would be, when you do something to another something that's extremely complex, you should probably have some kind of clue as to what you're doing, yeah? Pretty much an axiom, IMHO. Honestly, while I was listening, it did occur to me that more often than not, when I set out to solve a problem, I'll think about the problem for a bit, then begin probing it with various possible solutions till one works or several solutions are obvious and I'll select one based on some set of criteria that makes sense to me and I'll rough out more or less what I intend to do, usually in a header file, then happily commence to coding… Ooooooof! Along the way little details I hadn't considered begin to crop up. Or worse, those details are not apparent until well after I've coded and debug/validated the basic case I was hot to deal with and Shucks! I end up either redoing what I have already done, or realize I still have large sections to go. Did I really think the problem through? Sure. But without some symbolic means of testing my implementations, before implementing it, the likelihood of bugs, oopses, etc are rather high. Happily, I guess I'm not too bad at what I do and so the number of problems I introduce is usually close to nil. Yes, I create bugs, every programmer does. But have some good habits, hard won and disciplined, about what the minimum requirements are for one of my modules to get checked into a source tree. Namely that I have sufficient unit tests on largish things, and that I have Build verification tests prior and post that clearly indicate whatever I did wasn't tragically stupid. Otherwise, why bother, eh? Still, wouldn't it be cool if, before I started out coding, I had more than just a good idea that what I'm doing will work and do so as intended? That's easier said than done. All manner of complicated procedures, methodologies exist to accomplish that in one way or another. Most involve a specification of some sort, which most professional developers will sadly admit are for all intents and purposes, non-existent. Or if they do exist, they are woefully out of date, or lack any real detail as to how it's to be done, what, in implementation terms doing it will mean, and what the expected result looks like when 100% correct. You know? Dev managers will spend endless hours justifying the non-existance of a reliable up to date spec, but won't apply the whip to pointless Program Managers or other semi-architect useless types who in theory create that crap, but in reality spend most of their time browsing the web and networking. Hmmm

So anyways, any tool that better defines the task, provides more verification that doing the task a certain way is really right, really workable, etc is highly desirable. More over, if it's innate methodology revolves around something more reliable that verbose text, well hallowlujia!  It's hard to top mathematical expressions for clear and concise. I can't make the claim that they are always unambiguous because sometimes it seems to me that are anything but that. But it's a much more clear and conscise media for expressing an intent than:

Step 1: iterate through the cells of array _rgFoo

                Step 1.A Do something to the cell of _rgFoo

Etc. So of course after Sergey's talk I scurried after him and expressed my excitement and could he point me to some references regarding formalizing algorithms, and proofing same? Well he did, and I immediately bought one of the books he pointed me towards.

A little number by the name of "The Science of Programming", by David Gries. Wow! It arrived this morning and despite yet another night of not enough sleep, I hungrily tore into the amazon box and settled back in bed with a cup o'coffee provided by my sort'a housekeeper, sort 'a roommate, and X girlfriend. Mmm yeah, long story, not worth telling really. Ahhh The book, so far is quite readable, unlike the DijKstra book which inspired it, "A discipline of Programming" or something similar. Mind you the first is apparently quite respectable, but for idiots like me a bit hard to digest when just getting into a subject. I usually reach for the Dummy's series on any new subject before diving into the heavier tomes. OK, if your reading this (and I have my doubts as I think most see there is really some writing here and beg off because I don't care to constantly write about who's fucking who so much) and your interested in software engineering, but haven't taken the plunge fully yet, well brother or sister, get set for a harsh reality. Books on things that require little or no thought are incredibly inexpensive. 's true! However, books that have substance the inverse! Disastrously expensive. Paperback, about 350 pages not counting credits an we're talking 70 bucks and that's from amazon! I find it curious that perhaps one of the most worthy books to read, namely The Book, or the Bible, is in fact rather inexpensive … Is it just me or did someone fuck up? Anyways, so yeah, books that actually contain much of anything worth really reading, excluding the Bible, are very expensive and you will inevitably find that the library, while keen on loads and loads of titles and "books", does not in fact like to keep much of the more in depth kinds of tomes around. Low readership? I dunno, but again, 's true. College libraries are often much better. I remember the first time I went into the University of California Riverside's library and nearly had a seizure! All those books! Not stupid stuff. But math! All kinds of math. Physics! Real history books of all sorts and persuasions! Literature, my Lord you'd have laughed to see the pile I attempted to check out the first time, LOL!

 

So anyways, Science of programming! Hopefully it will enlighten me (I'm guessing 90% of the work is on me, which is no slight on the author, but the simply reality of studying:) as to a better way to approach solving problems. Something real and versatile. Truthfully, I read about UML, and case, and all manner of other notions that probably have their uses in various scenario's but when push comes to shove, if I have a choice, I'll pick something mathematical over anything else. It's hard to lose there, you know? More over, excitingly, it looks like this book also serves as a gentle introduction to BNF notation and others. Areas I'm woefully innocent of. That's the rub with being largely self-educated. I tend to pick the things that interest me to study. To follow various paths wherever they might lead me. I end up understanding something's to a ludicrace depth, and conversely am terribly ignorant of many of the basic things others more formally educated take for granted. Not content with my poor boy lack of the basics, I will often devote a disproportionate time to to learning and if necessary (it often is, cause I'm not even close to being what you'd wanna call a genius, LOL more like a low grade moron I think) re-learning what I thought I had all ready done learnt, a truck load of cool stuff and some that ain't so cool. Ya know? Still, since I am not leasure suit larry, not a social supper fly kind o fguy, I have ta do something to occupy myself and it happens I like to be constantly busy and learning! Long time readers of my little slice o' blog-dom will recall I was for a time stuck in a hospital bed. Yep, there was a working tv and eventually I was able to pick up the damn remote and turn the fucking thing off. LOL, you have no idea how hard it is to convince an endless string of nurses that Mr. Hardcore tough and incredibly fucked all to hell bad ass army scout is not only not interested in watching "The Game" but that it does in fact give me a head ache (really really) and though I was constantly stone on more opiates than I ever care to come across again in my lifetime, it is also flat boring! So, just sitting in a hospital bed with no ability to write, nor read (try reading when your freshly blown up and constantly stoned whether you want to be or not) nor able to find anything even close to interesting on the whole for or five channels the little TV did actually get.  Mmm if I'm bound for hell, I'm so way fucked cause Satan will have an easy time torturing my dumb ass! Fortunately, Jesus is my savior and that's no joke so I don't fear that over much, but it does make me chuckle.

Hmmm Relationship stuff. So I met a girl. We both thought we hit it off really well. And then it fell apart. Cause in the end, I can't be anyone but who I am. And she can't be anyone but who she is. I'm obsessive about learning and working (no difference in my case). I get grumpy and incredibly distant and develop a low tolerance for the trivial day to day things. She is a social butterfly with the sexual capacity of, well let's just say she likes a guy who packs heavier fire power than me and that guy best intend to use it regularly. Doting and lots of attention are also high on her list. To me attention is being in the same room as the other person and not objecting. After the initial hormonal hi how are ya, false starts and the usual honeymoon god this gal is great, man this guy is special (mmm jerry's kids always springs to mind in my case) things began to fizzle pretty quick. In fairness she did say, hey, gimme what I want or go away and I in turn said go get what you want and I won't mind. Well, she did and I found that I was in fact terribly wrong. I mind if someone else is fucking who I think is my girlfriend. Oooops! My bad. I honestly didn't think I'd care all that much. After all, what skin of my nose is it if she goes and get's a bit on the side? Mmm a younger John probably wouldn't have cared much. This john found himself positively crushed. Pretty much as bad as the first time it happened. So, lesson for me, no more loosy, goosies! For now she is doing the housekeeper thing, whilst deciding it might be good to look for a job. For awhile I had thought I'd be content with her being the housekeeper, but in the end, I keep getting images of her bangin some other guy and well it goes downhill from there. She's not a bad sort, but obviously not of the same ilk as myself. And while great looking, her interests don't tend to excite me over much. Worse, she seems to detest most scifi. Ouch! Un-forgivable! Plus she's got an X who she either doesn't want ot or is otherwise incapable of shacking and that seems t provide an endless wellspring of drama that frankly gets old after a short while. She also has a great son I happen to really like. I'll be sad to see them move on, yet maybe happy as well. I find myself browsing the craigslist women seeking men adds but over all have no desire to reply to any of the posts. I haven't had great luck with Craigslist. Paid for lots of dinners. Got laid here and there. But over all, there must be something to the saying you get what you pay for. Free personal's me's cheap women. Not bad, but well, if you have higher aspirations than marking the highest you can pee on a ball bathroom wall, well maybe craigslist isn't the way to go. Or maybe it's me and I just haven't picked well or I don't know.  None the less I did see an add from this gal my age who claimed to read large formidable economics texts at Starbucks. While not interested in replying, I think, it occurs to me that that sounds fun. X out the economics and pencil in calculus or better yet my new book on the end all beat all way to develop and it sounds like a winner!

I've read it and heard it and generally accept it, to meet a good match, don't hunt, but instead do what it is we do and eventually we'll bump heads and live happily ever after. Certainly by hunting, I seem largely to meet women who are hunters. And my own instinct, once having more or less found what I'm looking for, is to happily pick up being me and assume they are content and doing the same. They are of course and they happily (or not so happily) go back to hunting guys. It's far less humorous in practice, but accurate none the less.

Now I'm visual when it comes to women. Oh lord am I ever. And versatile as well. Thick one's, not so thick, huge tits, not so huge, dark hair, blond hair, reddish, women are beautiful. Can I get an Amen! I once married an ugly women. S' true, I really did. I didn't know she was ugly, till I got to know her and frankly when I get to know someone is when I discover their beauty or ugliness. But initially of dear lord how the flesh of these feminine creature doth haunt my mind from time to time. Yet for finding myself attracted to most anything mate-able, the real important stuff is much rarer than uranium. Enjoying a conversation. I love to chat about ideas and concepts. I love to listen and learn. And I detest statistics produced arbitrarily out of who ever I'm talking to's butt! It's like stating some percentage is some how an evil form of black magic cause the idiots will believe and take it on faith that a percentage is somehow suitable and reliable and verifiably accurate as an unalterable proof of something in general. Mmmm not in my world, bub or babe! Any number cruncher will immediately squint and start wondering just where the fuck that percentage came from. Was the population sampled or exhaustive. Was it a truly representative sample? What methods were used to sample and how reliable were they? The list is endless. Statistics do indeed have many uses and can be powerful tools both in prediction and in postmortem's. But they are also more slippery than a soapy frog what's just emerged from a female buffaloes nethers whilst she's in the grip of her mating frenzy. Good luck catching that little fucker cause he's now scared and determined to evade everything, most especially the buffalo he just emerged from!

 

Alright, enough babble from me. Have a good night internet land.

So I've been working quite a bit. Mmmm a lot lot. And I find that the more I work, the more I want to work. Like an addiction, but maybe not such a  bad one. I've always had it in one way or another. Well, I've done quite a bit of it. Enough to warrant a promotion and nice boost in salary. J Nice but who cares. The green pieces of paper are not edible, and don't seem to be of much use at all, except to shuffle this way and that. Though they do ensure I have excellent hardware to continue my obsession withJ. Well, this Friday saw the nearing to completion of a milestone in the project. The fruits of my endless labors was that in describable bliss I always run head long into after toiling for what seems forever against what seems almost insane objection and odds. I've basically rewritten the entire testing setup for these components. Work that desperately needed to be done. More over I've enhanced the shit out of it in order to test the core layout back bone for the nest version of IE. While I won't vouch for what the UI behaves like, in terms of layout, it kicks ASS! I know cause I'm responsible for making sure that it follows the CSS spec to the letter and where that isn't very clear (plenty of places), whatever gimp and other layout engine do, we do better. I had to essentially write my own renderer for HTML and then some since word and a hoard of other apps use us. From start to now, my co-workers and mangers cringed each time I said this won't work, I need to change this or that. And in my one peer's case, she consistently chose to do the copy paste thing with dismal results that netted me more hours of headache and work and frustration than I care to admit. But this Friday, at last, I got things to a point where I was actually excited to demo it to my immediate manager. He fucking freaked! He was nearly babbling with the possibilities. Easily 75% of the work I did at home on "my" time. That same manager had stoutly refused to schedule any time for the work I did. We need to test this, need to find bugs was his constant excuse. Yup! We sure did, and do. However, without something to test with, you simply can't test. As I developed I pounded the fuck out of the component's code and churned out a truck load of bugs. Not the kind that come back as, check your fucking inputs, nut sack! Rather the kind so bugs the dev's have shit fits about because they fucked up something and missed it. And these guys (yes, all of them male, sorry ladies) are some smart dudes. They don't screw up lightly. So anyways, this last Friday was a good day for me. Mouth noises from my manager aside,I was filled with a rather intense inner satisfaction that something that once only existed in my imagination is now quite real, and very powerful, resilient, and very useful J.

 

I got home and realized I could now devote time to more interesting things for a change. My cats felt otherwise, as they often do and demanded I pet them for a bit, then once through with their slave, sauntered to their nearby roosting spots to pur and relax whilst I opened up a project I had been working on prior to getting so involved with this whole layout in CSS complaint ways thing. And that, my likely bored reader was memory allocation.

I used to use new and delete, HeapAlloc and HeapFree, etc and not really worry about where the memory came from, or what happened to it once I was done with it. And occasionally I would wonder, is there a more preferment way to deal with memory? Does it matter? Why not just use the OS Heap functions and not worry. Well, during much of the work I've done over the past few months I've learned a thing or two. And one of them is, yeah, it matters. Little things do matter quite a bit. In fact they sometimes matter more than the big things.  Let us pause for a moment and reflect upon that statement. The little things matter more than the big. Bold words, I know. But really, they find their way into truth and reality by hook and by crook.

Some things are easy, relatively speaking, to correct. Wrong structure or algorithm for doing something? Change it. Not that big a deal if you've engineered what your doing properly, or so it's been my experience. Bu those damn little things, the oh, I can just do this and leave myself an //@todo(jhw): do it right next time sort of deals. The oh, I'll just use this handy windows API that just came out and not worry bout it kind of thing. Well those little do dads add up fast and suddenly one pebble hits another and before you know it you've got bottlenecks all over the place and they are deeply rooted  and non-trivial to resolve. Or you code is hogging system resources like there is no tomorrow and that's just not what you were hoping to achieve. Well, memory has always been like that for me. Then I began to think I'd experiment with it a bit. Now before rolling your eyes and exclaiming, oh dear lord no! Not another end all beat all memory module only he knows how to use, but he wants us to use it instead thing! Nope. I AM writing a memory allocator and maybe manager. But it's mostly for me and will likely wind up in my work project, as most things I get interested in do. But largely it's a learning tool for me.

Several months back I'd started thinking about the problem, how to write an allocator, and came up with some notions. I coded some classes based on those notions. Wrote a stupid test harness to exercise my little allocator. Life was interesting. Key word in that last bit was I wrote some classes! Well, so during my triumphant evening last Friday, I decided to dust off this old little group o'classes that I called JaMemMgr and plug it into my work project. It desperately need a memory manager as it does a truck load of allocating and freeing and the one that is there, while it does work and tracks and reports memory, is slow as the hills. 1 page per alloc, at minimum. And it Free's each page at delete time. I had no idea how expensive it was! Ok, so I plugged my little memmgr into the app, built and did a test run. Crash! Hmmm stack overflow. New getting called to create my memmgr which goes to create itself recursively into the crash. Uh oh! A painful fledging bit of learn emerged after wrestling with the problem. Now I realize I could probably resolve the issue doing some things with placement new operator. But that's the thing about learning and really the essence of what moved me to blog this evening, ranting vents and misc insults to the opposite sex aside. Cost/benefit. I love to work with c++. I don't hate c or assembly, but c++ has a beauty to it that very literally makes my heart sing. Well, despite that, sometimes, c++ and classes are really not a good solution to a problem. In fact, they might be overly expensive in this case. Now if you are a super experienced dev, you will easily see where I'm at in my own journey, at least partly. It's a very fundamental problem. Yet, I find myself being far more interested in fundamentals and the extreme nitty gritty of them quite often.  Not necessarily because I think I can do better. Heh, I'm not that smart. But understanding things well at a core level has always seemed to give me a huge huge advantage when it comes to the higher level areas. Spelling not being one of the fundamentals I give a shit about more often than notJ. So back to my engineering issue. So using new or even static (which will invoke a different new it seems)  is definitely not such a hot way to invoke my ubber memory allocator/manager.  At first I sighed and considered scrapping the damn thing. Which kind of galled me because it's pretty. And then I realized, quite out of the blue, that I could encapsulate the data into structures, which don't require new and have no code to run, then have functions that accept the structure and behave as if business as usual. A not class of things that don't need new. See I found (chime in if you have suggestions) that functions will run just fine, but trying to instantiate a class is a much more dicie business. Moreover, I stubbornly don't care to relay on ANY heapALloc or malloc calls to get at new memory. Now I do have to use some OS functionality, I have no desire to dip into kernel mode, etc just now. So virtualAlloc is the way and the means. But every os has a similar call, I figure, so whatever the name, it's still a portable solution. So in this particular case, without dipping below the level of the OS, to write an allocator classes are anything but the thing I want. Instead, I need a group of core, simple functions that operate off of a group of structures that maintain state and the bulk address ranges that the upper world feeds off of. It's an invisible dance !!! When I realized how this could work, and for all I know it's been done a thousand times before, so what, I still thought of it myself and if anything, it adds sauce to the bird to think others might have came to similar designed independently. I love this subject. I always come back to that same analogy. It dances. Code dances. It's choreographed to such a precision that it nearly pains me with it's simply yet infinitely complex beauty. So anyways, I'm not done rouging out my learning tool in it's v2 incarnation yet. And maybe I'll run head long into yet another ooof! But that's not bad either, eh?

Success is best measured in a long string of failures if wisdom and sincere knowledge is the end goal, or so I say ;) Lord knows I could use some wisdom now and thenJ Have a great evening internet land.

So usually I write about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as they related to the war, the divorce past, current girlfriends, mmm yah mostly that seems to capture allot of it.

But really there's allot more to me than pining over past or even current romances and LOL if there isn't then I damn well better get busy with it, Yo! That's how I roll, G. Yes, internet land, I'm now a hip and rather cool sort of mmm well, I prefer one-dimensional piglet-ee sort of creature:)

So I may or may not have mentioned I'm software developer and I pimp out my creative skills to the beast, aka Microsoft. I think it's kind of silly that sometimes, well, quite often, that minor detail causes a ripple where ever I inadvertently let it loose to flap about tiredly on the ground. In truth I would do the work I'm doing currently for free. And if You've read much of my blog you'd come the realization that isn't BS I have not too long ago and lack of $$ didn't stop me from writing some of the best code I've written in a while. In the end, that is the cheddar for me. The ability to create interesting doodads that were once imagination and now more or less help to populate your hard drive in all likely hood. Oh, of course not everything, I like to craft my code and much of what you run is crap more often than not. In technical terms a Kludge or peace of fetid, donkey penis that's sat out in the hot sun and fed a little of hungry maggots. So why work for the man? No not the one some run from, the skinny sort of geekly looking one (yeah I know I could be describing myself as much as Mr. Gates, LOL)? Well, since everybody uses our software, trying to influence how some of it is created is the best way to try, and you have no idea how much I sincerely try, and make something that was great, became ok, and now sucks what's left of that donkey's penis. Actually, it's not all crap and there really are some way smart people at the company and that too holds an attraction for me.

Lately that has also began to be a problem for me. What happens when smart people cease to do smart things, when they stop valuing the endless quest for truth, or perfection, when they do in fact sell out and choose to get things done Quickly, sloppily, with little or no pride in their workmanship? mmm well, ya get Vista for starters. An amazing collection of technology that others chose to hawk and blow a huge and ugly loogy on.the result is what gets sent to you my adoring reader.

What is disappointing to me is the seeming insanity in touting Windows Vista as some kind of winner. Parts of it are. Parts of it were begun in the evil minds of true and sincere geniuses and slowly baked and developed and refined to the point of blinding speed and efficiency. Something our competitors should definitely be not just concerned about but in fact running to the water closet in terror over. But their saving grace is that along with those very talented and truly devoted evil geniuses come the drones. Less than true drones they are the celebrated managers, program managers, jet-some and float-some of the technical industry with not much in the genius arena (at least not computer science, mathematics, or even basic coding skills) but loads of noise about synergy's and proactive diorama's of vive rent color and panache. They do things to be notice, to be able to say that have had an impact on the products (yep! You did, it sucks as a result of it) and to garner networking connections of the human and equally worthless fellow wastrel types.

An example: My current project has to do with IE. In fact a rather core part of IE if ya must know. Very cools stuff because we are not using a bit of what IE has, and in fact enabling them to severe that non-css compliant bunch of bloat in the not too distant future. The stuff that Opera and Firefox have been doing ? Yeah, heh heh, Ie wants to do it too. So I'd never worked in that area. LOl well, it's been an experience, lemme tell ya. I wanted to look at how they had dealt with validating layout. This got many a puzzled look. That's a really hard problem, was the reply.

mmm yeah, and so I'm hoping to get a head start on it by looking at what you folks have done to solve it. This actually happened, I might add I'm not really joking. There were multiple troubled looks around the mega cool high tech conference table. But no replies. In point of fact, because the problem looked hard, they chose to avoid validating layout and choose instead to compare images. sort of. Not a particularly useful idea, really. So I pressed the issue. So, what you folks are telling me is that through seven versions of this product you have never found the time to create a way to ensure that what it was doing was actually what you intended? Still no reply's. I'm not being nice. Yes, they test. Allot. mmm you tell me, do you use firefox or do you use IE these days? Well, if you like web pages that do what a css compliant web designer intended, ya use firefox or opera. Definitely not IE. they have their bugs and short comings, make no mistake. They just don't seem to be as shy about admitting them, or rolling up their sleeves and taking a crack at solving tough problems.

Is it simply entropy? Has the big MSFT simply ran out of steam for the most part? We put millions into research, and millions more into acquiring other companies that did research better than us in some areas, and still millions more into executive types that cringe at how many millions we spent doing all of the above (but generally not at their own salaries). What does sustainable innovation really look like? Does it have our middle eastern, Indian, and Chinese brethren's stamp of global approval all over it? Or is that merely a fad in this country? I dunno. I feel confident that I will get to do more cool things here, though many of them will do their cool things unnoticed for what they are by the masses. I don't mind much. Mine is only a little itty bitty part, mostly. I hope for tougher problems to pit myself against.

I find myself becoming fairly disgusted with most everyone around here allot of the time. I work longer and longer hours. Rage against the lazy I don't care folks and the Jesus what does it matter as long as it mostly works type chants managers sing in groups, rallied round a bon fire of their own diploma's and former outstanding accomplishments'. I see more and more what Mark Buchannan was talking about and resent it even more. We are hardly a rational species at all. We are clearly imitative and occasionally adaptive for the most part. Being rational is hard and frankly fraught with errors and many failures, much pulling of hair and really long nights with no take out pizza. The rewards are few, the respect is less, and ya typically never quite feel at home anywhere because you realize that if your not imitating others, they think something is definitely wrong with ya. The phrase, "get a life"  comes to mind.  It's no longer terribly Avanti Guard to say that. Gone to are the days of, "You've got issues". I honestly don't know what is current right now. See I did get a life. One that is shaping up to suit me rather than my fellow ape descendants.

Why does it seem to make other people uncomfortable when they notice  I work endlessly and dare I say passionately, and seem to be having enormous fun  in the process? Yep, I often, not occasionally but often work literally strait through one or more days. That's how cool what I do is to me. Granted this whole PTSD thing  sort of keeps me up, but then again, I simply don't seem to get as tired in my mind as I once did. I sleep when I'm tired. Not because it's time to sleep. Well, I tell a minor fib. I hope to somehow establish some sense of routine and  regularity, but thus far I haven't had much success. Just one more feature to crank out. Ya know? 

So working at Microsoft often impresses people Generally not people who work for competitors, but if you don't work in the software industry, it appears to really seem kind of cool. Like maybe I'm smart cause I work there. Usually I declare flatly I'm not, but secretly wonder if I really am. Lately I've begun to think maybe I am, but I still am not 100% on what it means to be smart. I'm pretty sure working at Microsoft doesn't in and of itself qualify me, re: the drone wannabee's, misc managers, and assorted idiots there. I often hear the words, hey, can you get me a job there? mmm k, here's the deal. I started in mmm 93 or so, sending my resume to Microsoft asking for a job. Any Job. That was back in a time when I didn't fully understand you really ought to ask for a specific job that's being offered. If you send resume's every month, over and over again, each different, each equally sincere, eventually someone somewhere will be touched by your candor, enthusiasm, maybe your persistence, or more likely still, the drones begin complaining about your resume's piling up and offer you a temp job. I did that and they did that too. I used to have this distressingly large collection of thank you for your resume cards they usually send back when they don't really want your resume, or so I think that's why they do it.

So it was my big chance. And if you think I wasn't just the happiest geek on the planet, well you'd be dead wrong cause I was so way happy. Not even being married to a fat, ugly, bitch I was stupid enough to get pregnant could dent my high spirits! That's how happy I was. You know? They offered me an interview and so I went out Barnes and Noble book store and bought what I thought was the best study guide on the planet, seeing as I knew very little 'bout windows 3.1 or DOS. I'd never taken a computer course. Frankly my first computer was an Apple Mac plus so in terms of windows I didn't know shit, 'scuse me I didn't know bits about it. But I was going to interview to support windows and windows products, right? So I bought a book (this was mostly before the dummy's books supplanted regular authoritative text for quick study and learn it now type books). I didn't bother with those kinds anyways. I wanted the real details on what makes a pc tick, and same for windows and DOS. I bought a rather thick, expensive and ultimately awesome book called Upgrading and Repairing PC's. I dug into it and began taking notes. I studied and studied like well, like I often do these days. Anyways, I got my temp job. I drool! I worked as a temp there for a year and half. It was awesome. That was when you could stay as late as you wanted to as a temp and no one cared. You could install the latest development environment and teach yourself how to use it. You could use the Microsoft library to get at the expensive books that the public library doesn't have, the college library won't let you leave with, and I definitely couldn't afford and I could read them to my hearts content!! I did that stuff too. And then some other temps complained because the full time employees were able to participate in an employee stock purchase program (because they were employees) and the temps weren't welcome. Well, things came to a head and Microsoft decide it was time to simply purge all of the temps, complaining or not. I was plunged back into the unfriendly world outside of Microsoft once again. But this John was a different one than he who had entered the hallowed place. This was a young man who had been spending close to 16 hours a day 5 to 6 days a week soaking up every bit of freely available development and software knowledge he could stuff into his admittedly pointy head. It was 1995. The roaring 90's!! Yeah! If you could even say the world megabyte, well you must know something about computers and that makes you marketable. So I marketed myself to law firms all over Seattle, using them to fund and further my education in software engineering/development. And all the while, I picked up my old habit of sending resume's to Microsoft. Except this time, I wouldn't accept a temp position I could lose as a result of some other asshole's whining or indiscretion, I wanted a full-time position of really any sort at this company. Why wouldn't I? They had all the toys and interesting things I coveted :>. They let you work endless hours and even encouraged you to do so, not even necessarily for profit, but for the FUN of it. The fun of developing the creative and critical thinking habit. The habit of learning and challenging tough problems. Well, I did get interviews now and then. Mostly for support positions. I wasn't what they were looking for, I was over qualified now, or didn't have the right amount of "business" experience, etc. Nearly three years and eight interviews spread across that time. If your thinking that's allot of resume's, well, you'd be right. As my brother scouts will gleefully verify, I'm nothing if I'm not terribly tenacious. (I also get quite stinky sometimes, but we don't talk about that too much:). It sounds like a joke, but it's not. In the end, one of the same HR stiffs kind of sighed and said, are you ever going to stop sending resumes or give up on an interview? I said with a smile, nope this is where I belong! I meant it. I told him with a strait face, "I want to be diverse. I want to recycle. I want to come home!" He said, well, you won't do for this particular job, that's for sure. I must have looked a little crest fallen, but none the less determined to hope. He said, however, would you be interested in supporting Microsoft money? I could have kissed him, and probably at that particular moment might have were I not streaming tears of joy. I was going to get to come home and more as a full Microsoft employee! mmm spike the ball, catch a likely lass and relax onto my Loral's? That's not what I came here to do. The time and effort and frustration of getting here was just the windup. Just the opportunity to find out what I really had in me. So often I had been told what a smart person I was. I honestly hate hearing it these says, for past stated reasons. No, I came to Microsoft, not to ease into a good job, I came to ratchet up the furnace and stoke the flames of unholy intellectual desire and learn, learn, learn. More over, to begin to hope that I might be able to some day use my mind productively and maybe even do some good for others with it while I was doing so.

 I make a bit over 70K a year. Not a fortune. Not millions. And I worked my way into that, I didn't start there. My bonuses are not amazing sums of money and gold piled high on chests I have closeted in some dungeon in my castle. It doesn't take much to bankrupt me if I'm not careful. Re: my last couple blogs:). No in truth it isn't the money at all, though I like being able to pay rent and have a fairly recent and kick ass computer at home. It's the challenge of solving tough problems. The long and often lonely nights of frustration and worrying the same problem over and over and over till I've got it figured out and looking beautiful. Did you hear that? Not just working. I prefer to have my shit beautiful. Don't think code can be beautiful? mm better stop reading and go back to the television, you'll find it a bit more palatable. As it has been said, art comes in many guises. I think mine must be in software engineering or development if you prefer. Taking ideas about how to solve seemingly silly and meaningless problems and turning them into rather powerful tools that the world literally runs on these days. That is what it is for me to work at Microsoft. It's why I look kind of funny at people as I motor away on my Segway to work (or used to, gotta take it into the Segway shop in Seattle for repairs:) As I write this it reminds me of the love I have for this country. Our land. Our people and our way of life. Yeah, there's parts of it that suck. Lots of people who suck, including me sometimes I'm sure. But her purple mountains, and the sheer majesty of this place just can't be beat as far as I'm concerned. Microsoft isn't America. We have our share of fuckups and worse as well. But they've stuck by me consistently and then some. Done so even when other companies would have dropped me like a hot rock. I have flourished here in ways that I value. And I continue to do so. For the amount of whining I often do writing this reminds me that it's the kind of place where I can indeed make a difference. Hell I do. My co-workers, grumbling all the way, now actually comment their code and correct spelling errors on occasion. I enjoy a fair amount of respect from them as from others and I would be lying if I didn't admit to basking in that. I'm the insane dev that went an got blown up in Iraq and more importantly the guy who tackles the hard problems most shy from and chew through them with delight. The guy still working when people come in the next day. I like that. I take pride in it. In truth, the less others do, the more I get to enjoy doing!

Solving the layout validation problem isn't all that hard. Stephen Wolfram, I think, definitely has the right idea. Most everything can be reduced to simpler and simpler notions of essence. Layout is no different. A box here, a set of vertices there. Tracing colors to form the shapes then reporting what they are, like a kaleidoscopic dance of light I get to compose, which when running I suspect is in reality the case. Code that works in a way similar to what our own brains might work like, fields upon fields of nodes whose tiny contributions and minor changes end up forming a net of heuristic wisdom which can determine quite reliably and much, much more faster than we humans can, whether your web page is constructed properly or not, based on intentional coloring and extraction of what is there and so on.

Pretty good for an old, poor, white trash guy descended from Oklahoma dirt farmers, eh? I can't resist:

And Now for something entirely different! ya'll have a great evening. John

So insecurities, pain and ugliness, all part of life. But only one part, and there, at the opposite end of the spectrum is happiness, and joy. Did I mention I have a wonderful girlfriend? That I love what I do for work? Those are largely the things that dominate my life. My goal of earning my Phd is slowly, glacially progressing. Idea's flow that amaze me. The constant refrane, why didn't I think of this before? At work, I've been switched to a new project, working on the layout component for the next version of IE 8. The has, by far, been the most fascinating project I've done at microsoft. I'm writing the test harness for the component. Doing so has involved writing my own renderer, designing and creating a completely new architecture for the current test harness, coding it, and now designing cases for it to run. I'm nearly finnished with the first version of my time manager application. I'm hoping it'll make a nice shareware app. Look for JaTimeMgr on tucows.com here in a couple months. I couldn't think of an interesting name for it, or most of the software I write on my own. So I ended up adopting a naming style, Ja Whatever it is. ie, Just Another Time manager. But most of what I write is just like the rest. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. I detest copying others work. To point of practicly reineventing the wheel. Besides, some things, most in fact, seemed to have missed the mark. Missed what makes a thing usefull and worth doing. Well, when my next app releases decide for yourself if it's all that usefull or not.

I started writing software long ago, so it seems, because I wanted to write games. Games have almost always had the hardest problems to solve, the most difficult and efficient code to write, the latest technology to invent and use. But there are other more fundemental problems, I've found, that seem so very sexy to me. navigating tree structures. Table autolayout routines. Functions that re-write themselves. meta-programming. Lately simulators and emulators have been a serious reading habbit.
mmm other news. For my birthday I treated myself to a couple of very cool toys:)
I bought a new case, motherboard, and cpu:) I now work on a quad processor machine at home with 2 gigs of ram that is so lighting fast it should boggle the mind. It overclocks automaticly, complements of Assus's AI NOS technology, and has built in wireless as well as standard 10/100 megabit lan. SO my old machine Igor has arizen from the ashes as Nemesis, the elite. Which is also the name of the case. TO go along with my new machine I bought a new claculator. The new HP 50G. Originally, I had intended it just be faster hand calc for school and independant study, but of course, since it allows the use of gnu c compiled programs it did occur to me that I could use it as a calculation engine for my veloci-raptor machine, freeing it from the time it takes to calculate things and also affording me the optortunity to use some of the technology I've helped create, namely richedit's Mathematic dispaly abilities. Something else to write in my non-existant spare time. This is what life has become for me. Where once I felt a serious rift between the physical and mental, there is none. My back gets worse, then magicly better, but I rarely move without knowing what it is to be in pain. Is that bad? LOL, only on the surface. I try to view it fromt he perspective that I have all the more reason to focus upon my accedemic interests and slowly that is is just about all I do.
My girlfriend Wendy will often drag me from working on whatever to enjoy an evening out. She is very understanding, I think. Not perfect, but maybe we become perfect for each other. I like tht she tends to focus on the joy in life rather than the ugliness. The last is always there, lurking in the shadows. It has value, a warning sogn, don't come here, here there is only pain and misery. But the joys we share are far more meaningful.
It's hard for me to accept that I need someone nearby to help care for me. Try though I often do, there are many things I simly can't do without risking the ability to walk. And other things I can do much easier than before. Most can't code as fast or clearly as I can. I learn faster than I could ever before. But carrying much of anything over 20lbs is dangerous for me. Being on my feet or sittingin an ordinary chair is out right painfull. Often I haven't the slightest clue what I have done to cause more pain, yet I can be awake all night in bed, unable to get compfortable. I don't sleep well, or often. Drugs don't help, not much does. When at last I'm forced to sleep, it's usually troubled and takes forever to be over. I do what I can and try not to sweat the small things. The world isn't a perfect place. But it has value, has beauty. It's hard to re-inevent one's self. Once I accepted the neccessity, the number of possible paths seemed and often still does, endless. TO a person with moderate ADD that can be crippling. But there's trick's to it, that help me to step out of the whirlwind of distraction. I write down ideas in my idea journal. Some of them I revisit, others I discard. But it allows me to refocus on the task at hand. The result is that what normally takes a team of three dev's to accomplish, I do solo. Sounds like a boast doesn't it:) I assure you it is not. Was being blown up a bad thing for me? I can't honestly say it was. It happend and nothing can change it. I wish I could have changed who lived and who died. There is always that. but would I change being even more capable than I was before? I hated the switch between workign out and dreams of Ironman, and dreams of learning and making what seemed fantasy become real.
Reader, do youhave any idea what amazing gadgets are quite possible? What kinds of software we could make if only we wanted to? Have you read the latest papers on handwriting recognition, of contextual reasoning, genetic programming? Our understanding of ourselves is at a cusp. More so than most would comprehend if the latest statistics on average IQ are to be trusted. Far from the rational, overly selfinterested and greedy creations classical economic theory would have us accept as ourselves, we are far more nobel and hardy. And understanding this, learning of it's wonderful existance should give us hope and a sincere and deep desire to transcend the shell of material existance to strive for something far more meaningful. A balanced and directed, purposefull existance. A mutually supportive and happy way of life than moves past the pitiful, petty ways of living we seem to have today. Read Mark Buchannon's ""The Social Atom" and you can begin to see the edges of it. Not based on I think this might be, but hard unargueable mathematical proofs of how we might be. SImulations that indicate clearly that cooperative behave, acceptance, tolerance, and mutual support without expectationof individual gain is far far more successfull a strategy of living than being a greedy and rational individual ever was. This is not a bid to exclude the individual. Far from it. I'm as eccentric and individual as they come without being a unibomber nut case. Rather, individuals, working together by choice and purpose, can achive far more than those who merely imitate and exist.

Sorry, I'm preaching aren't I:) So whether I morph this blog, or merely begin a new one else where, the past has ...  well, it's past. It can't be changed. I don't know if time heals all wounds. Some of them hurt more as time passes than they did when first struck. Others less. I haven't forgotten. The nightmares don't come as often, but now and then they do. I try not to torture myself about Iraq. I try not to judge my fellow Americans regarding they're lack of support and will to be what we claim to be, to be what purhaps we should be. I try to remember the joy of being so close, so very bonded to 29 other men. I hope to somehow make Donnie's sacrifice mean something beyond a statistic. I give freely when it comes to money. Recently I wanna  raffle for 250 bucks and made a point of giving the winnings to Adopt a platoon. Not because I want to be a hero, but because they are struggling for us and unlike the many, I have a unique knowledge, being one of them, having done as they do, they deserve our utter and complete support regardless our discension as to why they are there. The fact is, they are there. The fact is, they have shed bled on that soil. It should mean something deep and sincere to us. I choose to take it that way. I hope more will, as time passes.

I sometimes think I should shy folks away from joining the service. What does that say? Would I have my son become an American soldier? Would I have him laying in a bit of sand, bleeding or fearing for his life? Or being haunted by those who fell whilst he lived? Would I deny him the sincere pride of knowing that we who have sincerely served know what freedom costs, it's worth, it's pain, and more? In the end it is a choice. There are so many reasons why I made the choices that I did. Most were idealistic. I felt it was a duty. I felt there was a need. I hoped to do my part and then some so that others wouldn't have to. I know from the mouths of my brothers it was similar for each of them. Above our dear Captian Ozmer maybe our leaders were often foolish, idiots. But for those of us who actually did the work day in and day out, the ideal's which led us to that ugly place led us through it together. That is my firm belief to this day. I think if my son chooses that path I will be unable to hide the feelings of pride in his decision and I will sincerely pray for his saftey and well being, as do for all of us there and elsewhere right now.

I thought to close this blog, but it feels there is so much more to the story. Much that hasn't been lived, thoughts that haven't be spoken or written. Not ugli thoughts, but hopeful ones. Dreams yet to be experienced. Challenges yet to have been faced.
My son bought me a diary for my birthday. Few would understand just how valuable, how exciting such a thing is to me. How can I express to him what a wonderfull thing a diary is? Or how thankful I am. I hadn't had the hear tot replace the one's that had been stolen by Rebecca. My idea journal had been a comprimise to me. I don't write in it often, only once so far. I'm reserving it for special deeper personal thoughts. Thoughts for him alone. It will be his when at last I am passed and with our savior and father.

So if I do write some more of if I don't, yeah, the road did turn rocky, hard and painful. But realize that I am now with someone who doesn't demand all of my paycheck. Who doesn't demand sex I can't always give. She brings me coffee in the morning and doesnt' guilt me nor critizing me for being who and what I am. We enjoy going places from time to rare time. Oh, she wants more, make no mistake. Don't we all? But even right now, she's busy spending time with her sister and enjoying herself, though sh'ed like to be kicking back on a riverside snuggling me and enjoying time outside. Time to do what I feel so much drive to do. It's good and I'm content with it.

Today is harder than other days. And so it goes. Somedays I don't hve it in the forefront of my mind and it's easy to pretend. To let the facade ooze arround me like some sticky black liquid, coating me in native camoflage so that noone will see me. Thus cloaked I prance about and pretend to fit in, to be incredibly well adjusted Dueham, the geekly guy who's goofy, perhaps a tad odd, but basicly ok. Or so I think. And then I am reminded of all that I lack and how very much I truely don't belong here, in this world, in this place. Did I ever truly belong here?

Even if I did, that person who might have belonged died Aug4th 2004. He died in an IED explosion and some part of him was so very ready to die. Expected to given his obvious shortcomings. He was proud, even, to die in the cause of somethign greater than himself.

The shell that is left, even less capable, even more seperated from those he shares a gentic link with, struggles and dies more slowly, painfully so. He asks God so often to take him back, even if only to sit on a cloud top far far from His Devine presence. And still he lives on. Why? To what purpose?

It is not a life without joy. He loves to use his mind. Has always loved to. But to his his peers this is a sign of what he doesn't enjoy. The trivial. The obvious, The uncomplicated. Constantly mis-understood. Mis-read. yet it is unlikely he is missed or desired.

I want to shout that it isn't my fault. That I didn't choose to be who I am, nor look as pathetic as I do, nor lack what it seems so many other men have. I didn't choose to not understand people. Nor to be plagued nigh and day with thoughts and idea that wont go away. Like splinters in my eyes that itch and sting until I dig dig dig to understand them, to ferit out the answer. But I do enjoy digging, learning, it's all I have left. There is nothing else and it gets repeatedly confirmed to me. Most don't mean to be cruel, most will in fact lie rather than state flatly the truth. But inside, each time, that hope dies a bit more. Let it just die completely. Why can't it leave me be. Accept I suck in so many ways. Learn to do what it is obvious I was intended to do.

I can't do what I used to do. It felt so good to be a soldier. Harder than most will ever have any conception of. harder still for understanding some of the reasons for the difficulty. And yet I felt accepted, even valued. In ways my current work will never be able to render.

Why can't I simply accept solitude and endure what half-life remains for this shell of whatever I am until I am called home? It's all I want any more. Nothing I can do about it, as much as I lack the dick length in bed, I lack the balls to finnish what I am totally dead tired of and maybe shouldn't have to deal with by any measure that makes sense to me, this wretched thing called life.

Where are we going from here …?

On a long road with miles to go

it's winding and cold and covered with snow.

But I ask you all what we want to know,

Where are we goin' from here?

 

Lines on my face,

 Lines on my hands,

they lead to a future I don't understand,

Some things don't go as they're planned

Yes, where are we goin from here?

 

Tracing the trails and through the mirrors of time

Spinning in circles with riddles and rhymes,

Trying to find it,

 searching to find our way home…

 

As the day draws close,

With tears in our eyes,

 there's too few hello's and too many goodbyes,

Silence is what answers our cries…

Where are we goin' from here?

 

We're all on this road, miles to go,

braving new pathways into the unknown,

Who do you ask?

Well, no one really knows,

where we are going from here?

Please help me find my way home!

Take me, sweet lover, take my hand,

Guide me to your breast, bid me feel you softly, warmly

It's arousing, stirring, demanding still,

I know it awakens you to, and that my touch makes you feel.

 

Your breath is sweet, did you know?

Let it fill my lungs, giving life inside, as I would fill you to.

 

I want you lover, to taste and touch,

to move beyond the bounds of simple lust.

 

It rest on a table, the by the bed,

This chalice of fire,

a cup of flame licking up into the night's air.

 

Will you drink with me,

I want you to.

Does it call you?

Does it whisper it's need, it's hunger,

it's promise of joy and peace?

 

Ride it, my love, a wild whirlwind of chaos,

ride the images of us entwined,

let it fan your lust.

 

Bid me come to you, submit as I do,

Let us kneel together,

and present to each other,

 ourselves undone.

 

Treasure me love, no promises not now.

Just love me tender now harder, yes let's  scream and howl.

No lies, no strings, nor doubts of where I'll be,

Trust comes with us,

This is how it must be.

 

With my body, accept my heart, my mind and soul,

Give to me the same, yours and mine we'll enfold.

There by the fire, on that beach which seems so far,

Let us lay together, naked and undone,

and drink deeply from the chalice of fire...

Some days, the words wont flow. Other days I couldn't stop the torrent if I wanted to. When I'm sad, in pain, crazy with despair: they come and haunt me till I spill them out on a blank page, expelling them from my mind like a poison that when splattered on a canvas seems almost beautiful, did I not know they were real. Then there are those times, when I inadvertently meet someone. A woman. A person, female and warm and very, very attractive. Words come and they are not sad words, but fiery and hunger and laden with lust and desire. It's not that I am some kind of sex fiend, far, far from it. And yet, sometimes, I stumble across a woman who ignites something inside me and words erupt like lava flung from a volcano. Did I craft them? Not consciously. Since I prefer to write as thoughts come to me, as my imagination and heart dictate, it's more savant than intellect. I'm merely a conduit for the thoughts and images to flow through, translating from a mental form to take shape in this strange world of ours.

 

Does she see the pictures I want to paint? Does it offend her the intensity, regardless of it's innocent sincerity? How could she possibly understand I'm far from crass or perverted? What reason to trust me at all, in the least? But did it ignite in her similar feelings? A hope of things to come? Passion does that, don't you think, reader? It short circuits our reason, our logic. Passion feeds on uncertainty and demands resolution, satisfaction, fulfillment. A hungry fire that consumes some fuel of lust and hunger and loneliness and more which I lack the words to describe. It's sounds almost horrific, doesn't it. To want someone passionately. To hunger for them. So often we just want and cannot put a face to our desire, but know only that we need. Our minds may try to make up the image and shape we cannot fill from reality, but it fails consistently to touch on the oohhh sooo real feelings of true fulfillment.

It's fleeting, so often. Is that what the Tantric is? Learning to preserve and cradle the passionate? I haven't the slightest. Don't care. She's captured my muse, my imagination, so easy, so quickly, like catching rain from the sky from which I fell. Perhaps she'll drink deeply of me, or merely let me fall to the ground. And unknown, it doesn't really matter. She isn't likely interested in crushing anyone, merely another who longs as I do.

 

So willingly, willfully, I open my arms and let myself slip backwards to see what the freefall of meeting this person will bring. A brief and warm meeting and nothing more? The possibility of drinking from a chalice of fire? A door into an unknown land?  It doesn't matter. Not because I don't care. I do actually. I want, very much, for there to be someone in my life. Someone I can feel committed to and to treasure. Someone I can feel is committed to me and who treasures me. Someone I can love and respect. It doesn't matter because at this point such things are dangerous to hope for, I've never met her. Rather just the prospect of meeting this person I've read about, have briefly padded along the mossy green paths of her mind, it's exciting and fun. An end in itself. And experience I'd as soon not miss. IF there is more, I will likely follow. Cowardice is not a fault of mine, sad to say. Only fools are so brave and yet hero's are the bravest of us all. I am no hero, but have bravery and thus I suppose foolishness enough to share. So bravely and foolishly I am happy to see where this goes, tonight and beyond with no reservation or fear. Catch beautiful woman, I fall this time, for you.

 

See what I mean, LOL, it's sounds so over dramatic, despite it's sincerity. I write it, knowing I'll post it in my blog. But maybe that is the essence of good writing. We distill the faint whisperings of the heart and mind. Purify them and amplify them so they might penetrate the armor of others hearts and deliver a message of warmth, and passion, and goodness. Well, that's the intent anyways.

Ok, well, I've responded to a couple adds on craigslist. Ahh writting. It's fun. Guilty. Why women enjoy reading what I write is sometimes alittle mystery to me. But it seems to be the general concensous. Granted what I should have been doing is working on a presentation. Our layout engine, an hours worth of material. Why am I not worried. Oh God. If there's one thing on this planet I can fake up, it's talk about stuff. Especially geek stuff. What's funny is even the designers get the details of whta they created fucked up. LOL, not that I am all that smart, but come on fellas. Well, anyways, I did actally put some time in on it. It's now 1041 and I should go home, tend to my neurotic cat, Pixel and catch some kip (sleep). Strange but I do enjoy writing my thoughts on this stupid blog. mmm to sleep, if I'm lucky, perchance to drema of maiden's fair and virtue's less so. Of warm bodies slick with sweat and passion singing in the air. Heh, kind of like a modern woodstock for one:).

So a couple of days ago my girl friend decided to dump me. SHe wasn't nasty about it, as women so often are, but then again, telling someone you want to be free to date, etc no matter how nicely, never feels good. It's an illusion that it could be ok.

Was I too old? Heh, she's 36 and I'm forty, guess what kids 4 years ain't squat. Was I not good enough in bed? Dunno. Was I simply boring? Maybe, I'm a geek. It's about all I have left in me. The war took the rest. Took my wife, if I ever really had one, took my health, took my peace of mind, took alot I guess.

But I'm still a scout. That little spark inside that says get up, pick up your weapon, fine leave a trail of blood but still get up. Put one foot in front of the other. And the last couple of days, frankly even the forseable future, that is what is left to do. Put one foot in front of the other.

Will things turn up? I haven't a fucking clue. I'm done with the craigslist dating, roll the dice and see what kind of pain comes of it. And since I simply don't end up meeting people at work, haven't in nearly 11 years, well, I'm guessing it's just not likely to happen.

I saw a guy in the cafeteria a few days ago. Typically overweight, hunched over his food, with some kind of TI graphing calculator punching away at it and sneaking glances at people arround him from time to time. Will this be me in a few years? So far removed from my fellow humans that I can't relate at all? Heh, aren't I already? Well, if that is the way of things then ok, I guess. It hurts, but what's a geek to do?