Posted by Joel
Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:50:54 GMT
I turned 25. I approached this birthday with dread rather than excitement, as I realize the extent of wasted opportunity in my life, and I realize every birthday from hereon out will likely be that way.
I didn't really celebrate. I was considering going to the city with some friends but was too tired. So basically I played WarioWare on the Wii with a couple friends and had some drinks. It was really a lot of fun but I worry about how unhealthy it is for video games to be my main source of entertainment.
Speaking of which, the WoW expansion came out so I've been playing that. Not as much as I thought I would. I'm only level 62. I try to play most nights but I usually only get in a couple hours. I've really been enjoying it though. The areas, music, and just general gameplay are great. I'm not as much of a carebear as I used to be when I levelled to 60, I just attack people if I think I even have a chance of killing them and I don't care if it's unfair. Makes it more fun, especially since they usually come back and try to kill me, and when they do I know I deserve it. Sometimes I lose even when I jump them and they're fighting a mob but I don't care. I think that's what the game is supposed to be.
This weekend I went to SLO to meet with my family. Dad flew in and Ben drove up from LA. Julia and I have close birthdays so we celebrated both. Ben picked up a bunch of food from the LA Portillo's, since it's kind of a tradition I have a Portillo's chocolate cake on my birthday.
I got another haircut. I like my barber because he is a zany Seattle hippie who believes crop circles were made by aliens and hallucinogens caused Christianity. He talks a lot and is great to listen to. Does a decent cut too I think, and is very polite. Always has tons of people waiting, clearly lots of repeat customers like myself.
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Posted by Joel
Wed, 03 Jan 2007 01:00:50 GMT
The last 18 days have been full of stuff and I apologize for not writing. I'll try to keep it short.
First there was a major site downtime on LuckyOliver one Saturday starting at 3 am due to a technicality in a nightly process I'd just modified for our new storage. And because my mobile phone temporarily wasn't working properly and wasn't accepting calls -- it's been a bit screwy for a while now and needed a restart -- and (for once) I didn't use the internet for nearly the whole day, I didn't find out about the downtime in order to fix it until well into the day. Since then I've replaced my cell phone and tried to keep my ability to be contacted quickly one of my high priorities.
A large company contacted us wanting to buy some images from our site, but they needed an extended license. So I just pushed through the feature within a few days, eventually finishing on the midnight before I was leaving for Chicago for my holiday vacation. It was pretty satisfying to see it go up and actually work properly due to our heavy testing.
So it's my first time back to Chicago in a year and a half, since the day I loaded up my beat-up Toyota and drove across the country. Dad picked me up at the airport and we got some Portillo's. I spent time with him and Nancy and her extended family for Christmas Eve. I mainly just tried to actually relax during the first part of the trip, sit around and do not much of anything. Of course I was still on call for work the whole time and working on things most mornings but only for an hour or so.
I spent a lot of time with Katie, going shopping with her at Woodfield, which was one of the better parts of my trip, just because I find her individuality refreshing. She doesn't seem nearly as susceptible to groupthink as some others and just does what she is interested in, a quality I've always liked. The next day she and I went with a friend of hers, Tim, to see Pan's Labyrinth, which was a very good movie but also surprisingly violent, so be warned. It was so hard to watch at times I kind of had to de-immerse myself and remind myself it's just a movie with actors and effects, which is a point I don't like to have to reach, but seriously. On the 30th I went to a birthday party with her and some friends at a bowling alley and then at a karaoke bar.
I saw my old friends again, many of them, at the Fox and the Hound in Schaumburg. Brian and Toby were in from out of town, Gim was there, Tiesch, I got to see Kim which was cool, and I was very happy to see Sean and his girl. We had a similar night a couple days later in the city, with Hans there, went to the Signature Lounge and looked out on the city, then went to a couple bars, one of which was kind of seedy and adolescent and crowded and we couldn't sit down in and the other was a relaxed karaoke bar which we actually had a really good time at.
New Years was ok. Went to some bar which had beer and pizza included in the cost, the only person I knew there was Hans. Unfortunately after the terrible Bears game it basically turned into another terrible hip hop club so not long after the new year I left. Hans and I went back and got some burritos and played pool at his place and had a better time then I think we could have had in that place.
OK this is too long so I'm going to cut it short, but those are basically the events of my vacation. I'd love to talk more about them, but, well, I should have been writing every day.
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Posted by Joel
Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:42:00 GMT
A couple weeks ago Marc hosted a "Chili con Carnival" at our place. Many of his friends from Google came over and we basically spent the time eating chili, drinking, and playing Wii. Really a hilarious time.
Yesterday was a Christmas party for LuckyOliver. We went up to the city to a place called the Supper Club. It was a really odd place, featuring "Diva Dan", the cross-dressing host, as well as some songs and other oddities. The food was a five-course meal on a set menu, but very good. You eat on a bed, which is more comfortable than it sounds, really. I really just had a lot of fun, all of the zaniness and costumes reminded me a bit of Burning Man.
Today Marc got a PS3. We don't have any games yet but we played some of the demos. The graphics are really very good and the games were fun. The system itself is a behemoth, bigger than the original X-Box, and will look really dated in a few years.
LuckyOliver is finally using a RAID setup on a separate file server. I'm going to make it host the database too. Scaling is a very interesting process and I'm getting a feel for it. There were a number of sleepless nights there though. I resolved a number of bugs last week. Now I can get back to features.
I've been working on some interesting algorithms which harness the power of tagging to determine relevance. I've managed to get it pretty fast with some special secrets, and on our tests so far the search results are just wildly improved. It extrapolates lots of information from just the few tags you supply and gives you the ones that best match the overall concept, via some mystical voodoo. It's similar in base concept to the black magic which fuels the tag intersection and related images.
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Posted by Joel
Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:31:05 GMT
Life continues on more or less the same. It's comfortable, productive, and my off hours are somewhat fun; largely spent playing video games and watching TV, but fun. I've played an awful lot of Zelda but have not yet beat it. And Marc and I have played Wii Sports a couple times and I just DESTROYED HIM REPEATEDLY in tennis. Bowling, I'd rather not discuss.
The Wii is just an all-around fun console. This is also the best Zelda ever.
I had some adventures in Ash in which he ran outside at one point and I had to retrieve him. I also accidentally dropped his leash once when he lurched away while I was distracted, causing me to chase him and fall down and tear my pants and skin my knee. I'm trying to think of the last time I skinned my knee.
LuckyOliver is doing well, some new features coming out. Coming close to the wire on disk space so this week will be an interesting one. And traffic is high enough we're going to need some new hardware there too before too long.
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Posted by Joel
Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:32:00 GMT
I replaced the tires on my car and got the wheels aligned, mostly thanks to Hunter driving me to and fro. I can't believe I commuted so long with such a shaky car.
I drove down to SLO and spent a little bit of time with Mom and Julia. The next day we went down to LA for Thanksgiving, held at my Aunt Renee's. There were a lot of people there but I wasn't feeling very talkative.
Afterwards Ben, Julia and I went to Jim's temporary place. He made some vegetarian food. I played around on the guitar, drums, and keyboard he had there, not really accomplishing anything worthwhile. I heard Ben's song he's been working on. Paul was there.
Ben and I came back to Ben's new place which I'd never seen before. I met his roommates. The next morning we dropped an amp off at Hollywood Phil's and then met with the family, again, at Philippe's, where once again I found myself somewhat annoyed and withdrawn. I decided I don't like Philippe's.
We walked around some of the historical LA area and then finally went back home. At home I took a few hours to fix the performance problem that had been at the forefront of my mind ever since I discovered a clue to its fix on Wednesday. LuckyO is now much faster.
Ben and his roommates and I, including the charming Gretchen, who is the only person I've met since college who recognized the name Thrasymachus, went out to see some acts play. They were good, but the audience was very quiet and I would have preferred somewhere we could actually talk to each other. A few girls they knew showed up and our small group became a larger one which didn't really match my interests as we went to loud and uncomfortable bars. I talked with some of them anyway.
I'm back here now, and despite recently deciding I don't really like ze frank anymore I watched a bunch of episodes with Ben and rekindled my interest.
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Posted by Joel
Wed, 22 Nov 2006 05:05:00 GMT
A lot has been happening. The move went well. My new lifestyle is infinitely more comfortable, with a washer, dryer, dishwasher, and parking spot. Marc also has a big TV and every gaming console, so I've been playing the new Zelda the last couple days.
This weekend I saw the new James Bond movie with Marc and a friend of his from Google. It was good.
Work had a security scare which really made me sick yesterday. It turned out to be an odd attribute of some software we use for monitoring traffic, and not actually a malicious person. Regardless, it really made me do a lot of thinking.
Today what seemed like a performance breakthrough turned into a frustrating mess as the site would hang after an indeterminate period of time with no trace as to why. I've had to go back to the much slower way until I can figure it out.
Marc has a dog, Ash. Ash and I were instant friends. But tonight he's been bad so he's in his cage and deprived of affection as punishment. Truly, I am ready to be a parent.
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Posted by Joel
Sun, 12 Nov 2006 17:55:06 GMT
Well yay on the outcome of the election and the resignation of Rumsfeld. Unfortunately Tom didn't win his district. It was very close, though, and I'm proud he did what he could and hope he runs again.
I'm moving again. I was supposed to move yesterday but I'm moving today instead. I am a terrible procrastinator.
In fact, writing this post is a form of procrastination. I really need to get up and go get a uhaul.
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Posted by Joel
Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:21:25 GMT
I voted this morning. A few things changed since my last post. Ryan helped convince me to vote no on the parental notification for abortions. I did end up voting no on Prop 87 as well. Sorry, Bill, your ad with crying asthmatic babies didn't convince me to raise oil prices.
You should really vote, and I encourage you to vote for Democrats in the US House and Senate. I also want to express what an honor it is to be the nephew of Dr. Tom Hayhurst, running to be a Democratic representative for the 3rd district of Indiana. His race should be a close one and could help the Democrats take back the majority. I can't think of a more upstanding person for our government than Tom. Good luck.
We'll see how things turn out.
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Posted by Joel
Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:12:10 GMT
I like Halloween, really, it's one of my favorites. It's almost better than Christmas because it doesn't make me feel guilty about not buying presents. However it does make me feel guilty for not taking the time to put effort into having a costume.
Honestly I like Thanksgiving a lot. It's a holiday I can get behind. Stay in, eat a lot, and just relax. I really would like to visit Chicago this winter, preferably for Christmas, so I should buy the tickets now. I haven't visited Chicago since I've moved here about a year and a half ago.
A lot of the reason I don't put effort into these things is because I view them as kind of "extra" pleasantries. I can't even really get my life on the level, let alone have time to focus on things which are positives. I always seem to have plenty of negatives which need cleaning up first, so that I can reach some kind of zero point, where my things are clean, and my legal stuff is in order, and my car functions properly. One day I will reach this point maybe, but I am a pretty bad procrastinator.
For Halloween I celebrated by getting to bed fairly early for once and getting a lot of sleep. My life is terminally boring right now and it looks to be that way for probably a while now, but that's ok. I just need to harness that boredom by using it to get myself on the level, and continue to try to cultivate my work, fitness, and hobbies. You don't need to live in the city for those, and internal satisfaction should come as prerequisite to seeking out the external.
When I move, I'm going to look forward to getting up later, staying later at work, and hopefully working out in the mornings before work. And, like, a 20 minute commute. And no parking issues. Plus we'll have lots of video games. I just need to use the extra comfort as a bed for self-cultivation and avoid growing complacent.
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Posted by Joel
Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:22:16 GMT
Last weekend Paul's dad Jim came to down. We all met up in Russian Hill along with his cousin David and I got solidly drunk for the first time in a while. The night was really a blast and we had some great discussions.
This week I worked a lot and was pretty stressed out trying to meet a deadline. There was some tension for a while but things seem OK now. LuckyO continues to grow and I'm happy with this new feature I made.
Besides that nothing much has happened. I told Marc I would move in with him in Sunnyvale in three weeks, so it looks like I'm giving up on the city life. I love it but it's just too far away from my job, and the only reason I decided to stay here originally was because I thought I had friends here.
I've largely given up on my self-improvement quest again due to the stress of last week and filled my idle time with WoW to actually relax and have fun. You know, most of the genuinely cool people I've met in my life are people I only know from online. You can't be nearly as discriminating when it comes to people who happen to be in your proximity, and meeting them is so much harder.
I did a lot of research on how I would vote. This will be my first time voting. I'm voting for the Democratic senators, representative, and governor, I'm voting yes on the Prop 89 campaign finance reform bill, and voting no on all of the spending props except the strictly regulated education spending one (not the property values one). This is because I know how much the California schools suck but I also know how badly they spend money generally attributed to education here. I believe in private schooling but I'm also a pragmatist.
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