Hey!
So life's flying past as usual. I had to go and get a job this summer, which makes the weeks go fast but the days go so slow. Sigh. So about this company:
Pluses
-Very casual, almost no dress code, free pop/coffee/tea
-Fun things, like going to see Star Wars during work, or having an all-afternoon party involving racing mini battery-powered motorcycles
-Getting paid approximately $infinite/hour
-Biking distance from home
-I'm sure I'm learning a ton
-Resume booooooooost!
Minuses
-Boring. If this is what life is like as a worker in computer science, get me out now. Long days sitting in front of a computer, making minor changes to a tiny part of a document management software suite.
-The people. Besides a few, most are standoffish and unfriendly. Well, not unfriendly, so much as just not very social.*
-Long days. But I can't complain about that, that's, er, a normal 40-hour work week.
-I fell off the damn mini-motorcycle. :|
*I swear, if my life were a movie, everyone in that company is a reused actor, someone I've met before, acting in a completely different role. We've got my high school economics teacher, one of my juggling friends (in a few years), my cousin, a kid from my high school... it's not quite uncanny, but it's only partially canny.
Anyway, as for the rest of life... this weekend was cool, saw a lot of folks from high school. Oh shoot, my birthday happened too! Yeah, I got a cell phone, which is pretty cool, for convenience reasons. I also got a George Foreman grill- oh yeah, I've been cooking! Damn! Cooking is fantastic! Next year, I'm cooking a lot, and you're all coming over to Webster for some delicious meals! And hey, other people like to cook too- we should all cook stuff and eat stuff! It could be like some lame cooking club, except it wouldn't be lame, because COOKING! Hot!
Man, cooking is so good. And there's this new grocery store near where I live too, called Trader Joe's, and it is so good too! Good healthy tasty natural foods, for cheap! Too bad there's not one in Pittsburgh (is there?)
So yeah... I really like food!
Monday, May 30, 2005
Thursday, May 26, 2005
I, um, work for this company...
Background: This week, Hyland Software got its 5000th customer. So they planned a party... for this Friday (tomorrow)...
Email I received: (And by "mini-bike" they mean those little motorcycles that are so small they look silly. Ever played "pocket mode" on Moto Racer? It's that. Obv. these aren't too powerful- they go like 15mph. But still. Here's the email:)
The Hyland 5000 mini-bike races will be held tomorrow in the back parking lot. Each grouping will race to determine their representative in the finals. We grouped certain areas together to facilitate the race times and such. We will then have the semi-finals races to determine the top four for the final race.
This is a "race at your own risk" event. If you plan on racing, we recommend wearing pants. We have gloves and helmets for those who wish to race.
1st Prize - $500
2nd Prize - $250
3rd Prize - $100
The four finalists also get to take their mini-bike home with them. The others will be raffled off.
Here are the times for the departmental races:
TIME - DEPARTMENT(S)
12:00 - Diner & CEC
12:10 - Tech Support
12:30 - Development
1:00 - Sales, Latin American Sales
1:30 - Marketing
1:45 - IS, OnBase OnLine
2:00 - QA, Documentation
2:30 - HR, HSU
2:40 - Product Management, Education Services
2:55 - Operations
3:10 - Installations, Project Management
3:20 - PSG, Custom Solutions
Thanks and Good Luck!
Err... so my company, it's a Dilbertesque cube farm, but it's, uh, evidently an awesome Dilbertesque cube farm.
Email I received: (And by "mini-bike" they mean those little motorcycles that are so small they look silly. Ever played "pocket mode" on Moto Racer? It's that. Obv. these aren't too powerful- they go like 15mph. But still. Here's the email:)
The Hyland 5000 mini-bike races will be held tomorrow in the back parking lot. Each grouping will race to determine their representative in the finals. We grouped certain areas together to facilitate the race times and such. We will then have the semi-finals races to determine the top four for the final race.
This is a "race at your own risk" event. If you plan on racing, we recommend wearing pants. We have gloves and helmets for those who wish to race.
1st Prize - $500
2nd Prize - $250
3rd Prize - $100
The four finalists also get to take their mini-bike home with them. The others will be raffled off.
Here are the times for the departmental races:
TIME - DEPARTMENT(S)
12:00 - Diner & CEC
12:10 - Tech Support
12:30 - Development
1:00 - Sales, Latin American Sales
1:30 - Marketing
1:45 - IS, OnBase OnLine
2:00 - QA, Documentation
2:30 - HR, HSU
2:40 - Product Management, Education Services
2:55 - Operations
3:10 - Installations, Project Management
3:20 - PSG, Custom Solutions
Thanks and Good Luck!
Err... so my company, it's a Dilbertesque cube farm, but it's, uh, evidently an awesome Dilbertesque cube farm.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
I am psyched
To do list:
1. Organize room, sell half of contents of closet on ebay. Like cards from the old Star Wars card game- would you believe someone would still buy those? Wow, ebaying might be fun. I could skip that whole "employment" phase of life and go straight to crazy-old-lady-ness. Buy and sell antiques, I mean, shoot, there you go.
2. Build a computer. We've got all the parts now... and I figure, I'm a CS major, it's one of those things I'm supposed to know how to do. (I guess I'm also supposed to eat Unix for breakfast, live under a table at an anime convention, hack into someone's computer just because I can, build a shrine to Halo and make hourly pilgrimages, grow my hair out like a rock star, except longer, grease it every day and ponytail it, hack into someone's pacemaker just because I can, and make seven million dollars by age 23... *sigh* I'm doing my best here)
3. Skip this one if you don't want to hear about boring computer crap. So I work for Hyland Software, in sunny Westlake, Ohio. Their main product is called OnBase; it's a huge enterprise document management suite. Companies use it to manage their databases of scanned and other documents. A user can login to OnBase through a "thick client" or a "thin client," much like using Mulberry vs. using webmail. The thick client consists of a large executable, like most programs you might run. The thin client includes a group of .dll files called the "core." The thin client accesses the core through a web GUI. Now, a developer might not like the thin client, for whatever reason, and he might want to create his own GUI. We give him (not him/her... first of all, "him" is gramatically correct; second of all, I don't think a woman would want to develop her own GUI. Hey Connor, you could make a misogynistic joke here, like: How many women would it take to develop a GUI for Hyland Software's OnBase? None, they all just use the thin client! ROFL ROFL LOL!) anyway, we give him the ability to develop his own interface solution through a module called "hyland.services". This module is powerful: using it, a client can run the following commands: Connect, Disconnect, QueryDocuments, GetCollection, GetDocumentData, and StoreDocument; thus, obviously, he has all the functionality he needs. Currently, hyland.services is written in C#; these developers might want it in Java. Because I am an experienced Java programmer, my project is to rewrite this C# code in Java. This is more difficult than it sounds, however, because, using Microsoft's .NET capabilities, a C# developer can access the Core, which is written in C++. It's fascinating, really, the Common Language Runtime in .NET allows languages to interact seamlessly like this. However, Java is not a Microsoft language, so, naturally, it is not included in the .NET revolution. This makes it difficult to use certain classes, such as one called "PropertyBag", which are in the Core. I may need to rewrite these classes from scratch. I don't think this will be much of a problem, though, because, for example, PropertyBag is really just a glorified hash table. Hah! They thought it was worth giving it its own class, when it's mostly just a hash table! What jokers. You didn't skip this one, did you? Serves you right. I warned you. At any rate, the differences between C# and Java are mostly cosmetic, so it's usually easy to just copy and paste the code. I think C# is a superior language, because it provides lots of easy tools to programmers, such as streamlined get and set methods. However, the world has Java holdouts, which is fair. A popular Java IDE, Eclipse, is available free at www.eclipse.org, and to develop in C#, most programmers use Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which is expensive.
4. So a summer w/o acting, or improv!... I'm telling you, by the time I get back, you'll have to feed me lines of code, and I'll spit out the output in binary through my ears or something. Maybe I should take up poetry: here, I wrote an Ode to Poetry:
Poetry
Poe, a tree!
Oh, it is comprised of a singer most popular during the mid-90's famous for such hits as "Angry Johnny" and "Hello" (or possibly, the gruesome author of "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and other literary classics... but then it'd be Edgarallanpoetry, which it certainly isn't), as well as one of nature's most beautiful creations, the magnificent tree!
Anger or gruesomeness, and beauty!
They fit together like butter and margarine, combining into a gooey mess, and why would anyone ever combine them?
Which is really the essence of poetry.
I appreciate your honest comments. But in all seriousness, #4 on the to-do list is read, so I'm going to go read (Catch-22 right now) and then go to bed.
1. Organize room, sell half of contents of closet on ebay. Like cards from the old Star Wars card game- would you believe someone would still buy those? Wow, ebaying might be fun. I could skip that whole "employment" phase of life and go straight to crazy-old-lady-ness. Buy and sell antiques, I mean, shoot, there you go.
2. Build a computer. We've got all the parts now... and I figure, I'm a CS major, it's one of those things I'm supposed to know how to do. (I guess I'm also supposed to eat Unix for breakfast, live under a table at an anime convention, hack into someone's computer just because I can, build a shrine to Halo and make hourly pilgrimages, grow my hair out like a rock star, except longer, grease it every day and ponytail it, hack into someone's pacemaker just because I can, and make seven million dollars by age 23... *sigh* I'm doing my best here)
3. Skip this one if you don't want to hear about boring computer crap. So I work for Hyland Software, in sunny Westlake, Ohio. Their main product is called OnBase; it's a huge enterprise document management suite. Companies use it to manage their databases of scanned and other documents. A user can login to OnBase through a "thick client" or a "thin client," much like using Mulberry vs. using webmail. The thick client consists of a large executable, like most programs you might run. The thin client includes a group of .dll files called the "core." The thin client accesses the core through a web GUI. Now, a developer might not like the thin client, for whatever reason, and he might want to create his own GUI. We give him (not him/her... first of all, "him" is gramatically correct; second of all, I don't think a woman would want to develop her own GUI. Hey Connor, you could make a misogynistic joke here, like: How many women would it take to develop a GUI for Hyland Software's OnBase? None, they all just use the thin client! ROFL ROFL LOL!) anyway, we give him the ability to develop his own interface solution through a module called "hyland.services". This module is powerful: using it, a client can run the following commands: Connect, Disconnect, QueryDocuments, GetCollection, GetDocumentData, and StoreDocument; thus, obviously, he has all the functionality he needs. Currently, hyland.services is written in C#; these developers might want it in Java. Because I am an experienced Java programmer, my project is to rewrite this C# code in Java. This is more difficult than it sounds, however, because, using Microsoft's .NET capabilities, a C# developer can access the Core, which is written in C++. It's fascinating, really, the Common Language Runtime in .NET allows languages to interact seamlessly like this. However, Java is not a Microsoft language, so, naturally, it is not included in the .NET revolution. This makes it difficult to use certain classes, such as one called "PropertyBag", which are in the Core. I may need to rewrite these classes from scratch. I don't think this will be much of a problem, though, because, for example, PropertyBag is really just a glorified hash table. Hah! They thought it was worth giving it its own class, when it's mostly just a hash table! What jokers. You didn't skip this one, did you? Serves you right. I warned you. At any rate, the differences between C# and Java are mostly cosmetic, so it's usually easy to just copy and paste the code. I think C# is a superior language, because it provides lots of easy tools to programmers, such as streamlined get and set methods. However, the world has Java holdouts, which is fair. A popular Java IDE, Eclipse, is available free at www.eclipse.org, and to develop in C#, most programmers use Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which is expensive.
4. So a summer w/o acting, or improv!... I'm telling you, by the time I get back, you'll have to feed me lines of code, and I'll spit out the output in binary through my ears or something. Maybe I should take up poetry: here, I wrote an Ode to Poetry:
Poetry
Poe, a tree!
Oh, it is comprised of a singer most popular during the mid-90's famous for such hits as "Angry Johnny" and "Hello" (or possibly, the gruesome author of "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and other literary classics... but then it'd be Edgarallanpoetry, which it certainly isn't), as well as one of nature's most beautiful creations, the magnificent tree!
Anger or gruesomeness, and beauty!
They fit together like butter and margarine, combining into a gooey mess, and why would anyone ever combine them?
Which is really the essence of poetry.
I appreciate your honest comments. But in all seriousness, #4 on the to-do list is read, so I'm going to go read (Catch-22 right now) and then go to bed.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
On lameness
Lame: not going to the Decemberists concert. Oh well, it's reasonable... it is 2.5 hours away from you Pittsburghers on a Wednesday night. (and probably not good for me to go to either, considering I uh overslept until 10:30 today! whoa!)
Not-lame: my job, which I thought was lame. Now that I'm actually doing something and not just inundated with a lot of reading that I don't understand, it's pretty cool. Further updates as exciting things happen!
Totally not-lame: coffee. it's up there with the arcade fire in terms of awesomeness.
Also not lame: dinner. Whoa, dinnertime, see you kids later!
Not-lame: my job, which I thought was lame. Now that I'm actually doing something and not just inundated with a lot of reading that I don't understand, it's pretty cool. Further updates as exciting things happen!
Totally not-lame: coffee. it's up there with the arcade fire in terms of awesomeness.
Also not lame: dinner. Whoa, dinnertime, see you kids later!
Friday, May 13, 2005
Post! Raisin Bran is a healthy way to start your day.
So what have I been doing this week that made me so busy I couldn't even post anything?
1. organizing room, it's a mess!
2. planning/executing my mom's mother's day/birthday festivities.
3. (sigh) playing Secret of Evermore, an old SNES game. I guess my inner dork shines through.
4. running errands, etc. Wow, there's a lot to be done in a family of 4 people!
Whatever. I start work next week. I have to say, not working is more fun than working, but this job should be cool. Hyland Software's the name, and, err, document management (I guess) is their game. Which sounds boring. But hey, at least I get to do something related to something I know how to do.
Enough about the future, it's time to live in the past! What I'll miss about last year:
1. Double-majoring in acting and having fun, minoring in CS (easiest major in the school!)
2. Improv
3. All those swarms of bees
4. wait for it... Donkeypunch!
5. Beast Bird Fish
6. Parties, especially at Webster and Kaitlin's house, because they're awesome. Also at that house next to Il Valletto, even though I don't know the people, because they have roofs!
7. Midnight Breakfast Buffet at Eat'n'Park! Goal next year: go to the buffet and get one of everything. Unless my eating ability goes blank. Which is a terrible thing to do when you're asked to eat everything.
8. Acting out that dialogue between Theresa and Sarah with Rob and Kaitlin. Like Running Bear!
9. Steven Rudich's incredible 251 lectures! err... cancel that.
10. Klaus's fantastic 211 lectures! Wait, I'm enrolled in the "Klaus teaches things he likes" class next semester.
11. Losing The Game.
12. Shoot, what's the point? This is lame, writing down everything I liked about the last year. It's all there, we all remember it clearly. So I'll stop being lame.
Right... I guess I did promise lists. So there they are. Boo-yah! Boo-yah! chk-chk-chk-chk-chk...
1. organizing room, it's a mess!
2. planning/executing my mom's mother's day/birthday festivities.
3. (sigh) playing Secret of Evermore, an old SNES game. I guess my inner dork shines through.
4. running errands, etc. Wow, there's a lot to be done in a family of 4 people!
Whatever. I start work next week. I have to say, not working is more fun than working, but this job should be cool. Hyland Software's the name, and, err, document management (I guess) is their game. Which sounds boring. But hey, at least I get to do something related to something I know how to do.
Enough about the future, it's time to live in the past! What I'll miss about last year:
1. Double-majoring in acting and having fun, minoring in CS (easiest major in the school!)
2. Improv
3. All those swarms of bees
4. wait for it... Donkeypunch!
5. Beast Bird Fish
6. Parties, especially at Webster and Kaitlin's house, because they're awesome. Also at that house next to Il Valletto, even though I don't know the people, because they have roofs!
7. Midnight Breakfast Buffet at Eat'n'Park! Goal next year: go to the buffet and get one of everything. Unless my eating ability goes blank. Which is a terrible thing to do when you're asked to eat everything.
8. Acting out that dialogue between Theresa and Sarah with Rob and Kaitlin. Like Running Bear!
9. Steven Rudich's incredible 251 lectures! err... cancel that.
10. Klaus's fantastic 211 lectures! Wait, I'm enrolled in the "Klaus teaches things he likes" class next semester.
11. Losing The Game.
12. Shoot, what's the point? This is lame, writing down everything I liked about the last year. It's all there, we all remember it clearly. So I'll stop being lame.
Right... I guess I did promise lists. So there they are. Boo-yah! Boo-yah! chk-chk-chk-chk-chk...
Saturday, May 07, 2005
And... cut!
All the craziness is finally over. Freshman year, 1/4 of my college career, probably the 3rd best year of my life so far, is over.
(Well junior year of HS was best I think, then senior year. Maybe vice versa. For what it's worth, though, last semester may have been the second best four-month period of my life (after summer 04), but fall semester was kind of a turd.)
Hey, now this entry will be a Choose Your Own Adventure! If you want to read an introspective, pretentious, indie-fuck blog entry, continue reading. If you want a normal blog entry and some nice easy-to-read lists, wait for my next post.
So for the movie of my life:
A scene of a party on a rooftop. No guardrails or anything, just a roof. Around, there's one big lit-up building, a distant view of Hamerschlag Hall, and a valley with not much in it. It's May, but still brisk outside. Everyone's relaxed, mostly quiet. A ladder leads to another rooftop; on the higher roof, a circle of people passes around some pot. I'm on the lower roof, someone suggests I should be a politician. I say, "No, if I were a politician, I'd be over here (sits down, completing a circle), talking happily with you. But I'm over here, (standing on the outside of the circle), looking a little awkward." I talk with some people, go inside, talk some more. Then we all go to Eat'n'Park, which was pretty normal.
So the moral of the story is, life's sometimes too perfect to be real. I don't mean perfect as in love, because that certainly hasn't happened yet, or tremendous luck, because that hasn't either (although some would argue that I got lucky when they were handing out lives, and I'd agree). Just too movielike.
I'll stop being all weird now. That all felt like something out of Garden State. But it really made me stop and take notice. Like the day I went biking in Bloomfield, came back, saw my house at the fence, and threw a frisbee for a while. A different perspective. Not in any noticeable way, but it's like the lighting operator threw a different gel over the lights of my life.
On another note, I love you all. The goodbyes got ridiculous, I kept saying goodbye over and over again to the same people. But now I actually am gone. So I do love you all.
Next post: easy-to-read lists, I promise!
(Well junior year of HS was best I think, then senior year. Maybe vice versa. For what it's worth, though, last semester may have been the second best four-month period of my life (after summer 04), but fall semester was kind of a turd.)
Hey, now this entry will be a Choose Your Own Adventure! If you want to read an introspective, pretentious, indie-fuck blog entry, continue reading. If you want a normal blog entry and some nice easy-to-read lists, wait for my next post.
So for the movie of my life:
A scene of a party on a rooftop. No guardrails or anything, just a roof. Around, there's one big lit-up building, a distant view of Hamerschlag Hall, and a valley with not much in it. It's May, but still brisk outside. Everyone's relaxed, mostly quiet. A ladder leads to another rooftop; on the higher roof, a circle of people passes around some pot. I'm on the lower roof, someone suggests I should be a politician. I say, "No, if I were a politician, I'd be over here (sits down, completing a circle), talking happily with you. But I'm over here, (standing on the outside of the circle), looking a little awkward." I talk with some people, go inside, talk some more. Then we all go to Eat'n'Park, which was pretty normal.
So the moral of the story is, life's sometimes too perfect to be real. I don't mean perfect as in love, because that certainly hasn't happened yet, or tremendous luck, because that hasn't either (although some would argue that I got lucky when they were handing out lives, and I'd agree). Just too movielike.
I'll stop being all weird now. That all felt like something out of Garden State. But it really made me stop and take notice. Like the day I went biking in Bloomfield, came back, saw my house at the fence, and threw a frisbee for a while. A different perspective. Not in any noticeable way, but it's like the lighting operator threw a different gel over the lights of my life.
On another note, I love you all. The goodbyes got ridiculous, I kept saying goodbye over and over again to the same people. But now I actually am gone. So I do love you all.
Next post: easy-to-read lists, I promise!
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
The mewling hordes grate on my ossicles
They desire a post. Can't they see that everything is a turbulent hurricane now, turbulent in the sense that a rainstorm of ice cream is turbulent. A beautiful mess of cheesecake and raspberry sorbet, with graham cracker and chocolate shavings.
And by mewling hordes I mean nobody in the entire world. And by that entire first paragraph I mean:
So it's finals week. Is it bad that it's like fun-week, with the occasional test? Well I feel like I'm doing fine on them so far, so I think it's good. So basically I'm all happy now, except that the seniors are leaving. Damn I wish I could go to Meatfuck tonight- last chance to see many of those kids... but there's a board meeting. Well, as Grubb says, get used to it, it'll happen a lot.
Oh, err, yeah, for those of you who don't know, Meatfuck is a trip to an all you can eat Brazilian steakhouse. Very high on the list of "most decadent things." But hey, it'll still be there next year.
At any rate, there's Kennywood Friday, Beck's "Guero" on my computer, going home on Saturday, and a week of relaxation.
Wait... dammit! I'm going home, that means I won't see any of you kids for a few months! Yeah, I realize this, but it hasn't really sunk in yet. Shit! Well... y'all should come visit Cleveland. Just a hop and a skip away from Pittsburgh, and hey, it's not racist as hell. I'm serious about a Cedar Point trip, if anyone's interested, it'd be cool. My house is always open.
And if not, I'll see everyone in August. Next year ~= cool. (that's a "will be equal to")
And by mewling hordes I mean nobody in the entire world. And by that entire first paragraph I mean:
So it's finals week. Is it bad that it's like fun-week, with the occasional test? Well I feel like I'm doing fine on them so far, so I think it's good. So basically I'm all happy now, except that the seniors are leaving. Damn I wish I could go to Meatfuck tonight- last chance to see many of those kids... but there's a board meeting. Well, as Grubb says, get used to it, it'll happen a lot.
Oh, err, yeah, for those of you who don't know, Meatfuck is a trip to an all you can eat Brazilian steakhouse. Very high on the list of "most decadent things." But hey, it'll still be there next year.
At any rate, there's Kennywood Friday, Beck's "Guero" on my computer, going home on Saturday, and a week of relaxation.
Wait... dammit! I'm going home, that means I won't see any of you kids for a few months! Yeah, I realize this, but it hasn't really sunk in yet. Shit! Well... y'all should come visit Cleveland. Just a hop and a skip away from Pittsburgh, and hey, it's not racist as hell. I'm serious about a Cedar Point trip, if anyone's interested, it'd be cool. My house is always open.
And if not, I'll see everyone in August. Next year ~= cool. (that's a "will be equal to")
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