Posted by Joel
Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:57:00 GMT
Monday I was kind of freaking out. The Apple Store called and told me my keyboard was in and that it would take two hours to install while I waited. I got a ticket on the way there for having a late plate registration and it just triggered some neurosis. Anyway I got to the store and they told me that they couldn't do it in two hours after all, in one of those "who told you that?"moments.
I left it overnight and used another Windows laptop on Tuesday. Tuesday wasn't as bad really. I picked up my computer with its new keyboard, and now it's today.
Made some good progress on stuff at work, I think our next feature is going to shape up well, our new storage should be installed tomorrow morning (our disk is at 92% full). Work is the most enjoyable part of my life right now, to the degree I wish I could stay later, but I can't because of parking. I really should move.
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Posted by Joel
Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:47:12 GMT
Well, this weekend sucked. Friday I just played WoW, nothing exciting. Then I spilled a beer on my computer. Luckily the computer wasn't damaged but the keyboard was. The "S" and "F" keys didn't work. On top of that we had site problems on Saturday so I had to debug them with the broken keyboard, clicking a little software program every time I needed to type "S" or "F". I went to the SF Apple Store and they couldn't even see me about the computer because they had appointments through the entire day. They told me to log in and make an appointment at midnight and try to get in on Sunday.
Instead I went to a nearby Apple Store in a mall. They actually helped me out. The guy saw that I had Japanese enabled and started talking to me in Japanese. I was caught off guard and realized how bad I have gotten at it since I haven't really used it in over two years. So that bummed me out. After trying a few different keyboards they had available, none of them fit right so he ordered me a new one, and will call me when it comes in so I can drive over and have them install it. In the meantime I bought a USB keyboard which I'm using now.
I got back home and spent over an hour looking for a place to park.
Sunday was also terrible, I just played Warcraft, did some reading, and otherwise felt depressed, and stayed up too late. Work is hectic right now. I'm not having a great time and I just don't know what I'm going to do in order to make it so I have fun again. It just seems like I don't have any friends anymore. Everyone is so far away or has become a jerk. I need to move to be at least near one friend because this sucks and I'm sick of living in Chinatown anyway.
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Posted by Joel
Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:39:00 GMT
Things are pretty predictable lately. I don't mind my routine, though. On the whole, my days are pretty enjoyable. Work, commute, and after hours; can't complain. It's lagom.
I was lapsing into later start times and consequently getting some parking tickets so I'm going the early route again. Trying to be in my car by 7 am every day. This is mainly so I can arrive back into the city by 6pm and still have done a full day's work; at 6pm, parking is very good, and tons of good parking spots require you be out by 7:00 or 7:30 am the next day. So if I keep that schedule well, I never have to worry about parking, and there isn't really much traffic in my commute.
Wednesday I worked out again. I hadn't done it in over a week so I decided to push myself. Before, I used to read a book and ride the bike for a half hour. I would usually burn just under 250 calories. Then last time I made it a goal to make 250. The time after that, I put the book down 10 minutes from the end and just made it all the way to 260 in a half hour. But this time, I didn't read the book at all, made my goal 265 calories as fast as I could do it, and got it done in under 25 minutes!
I've also "levelled up" on curling, now doing reps of 40 lbs instead of 30. It's a good feeling when you get to move up a weight rank.
I want to try to lose a pound a week. Or at least a half pound. Really need to exercise more, though.
At night I've just been having a few beers and chatting with people or watching TV or playing WoW. Weekend is coming up so who knows what I'll do. I'm going to give myself a couple errands to accomplish so I can start chipping away at a backlog that has been growing. Slow and steady.
Ben made me aware of the show with zefrank and you should probably watch that.
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Posted by Joel
Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:21:43 GMT
OK, it wasn't bad. Friday night I played Warcraft and had fun doing that. Saturday I went to a barbecue in Berkeley with Paul and his many friends and housemates. Lots of people were there, Justin, Michael, Richard, Albert, Sam. I had a good time and their new place is pretty cool. I was glad to see their Soviet Russia flag flying freely upon entrance.
Saturday night I played Warcraft again, more group PvP, just killing people with Ben. Then the next day I drove to SLO to Mom and Julia's.
We went to Tortilla Flats and walked around town a bit and then went back home. I spent nearly all of the next day napping and hanging out with their new kitten. We didn't have readily available Internet, so I started a new forum project just to kill time -- this time tree-based rather than linear. And I think I'm pretty much sick of AJAX forever.
Kind of funny I programmed during most of my Labor Day.
I'm saddened that I missed Burning Man because my friends are all horribly lame but what can I say, I had a pretty good weekend and I need to stop whining.
Oh, and I'm thinking of moving (again).
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Posted by Joel
Fri, 01 Sep 2006 01:15:46 GMT
So Labor Day weekend is coming up and of course I was too stupid to make plans. So as much as I'd like to go to Chicago I didn't buy a ticket. And as much as I'd like to go to Burning Man I don't have anyone to go with.
I'll probably end up going either to my mom's or to my brother's.
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Posted by Joel
Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:10:00 GMT
So I'm switching some of our production tables over to MyISAM. This is a pretty radical shift for me. I used to be a big PostgreSQL advocate, but now that I'm working on such a big site, it's all about speed. And MySQL is just much faster.
And why MyISAM over InnoDB? Because I don't need foreign key constraints. And I don't need transactions. All that stuff looks good on paper, but in reality, it comes at a huge performance hit. And for what? It helps you detect bugs. In short, it's basically like running your production application in debug mode to use an ACID-compliant database.
Any sort of validation, on delete cascade, anything can be done on the application layer if you really need it, but when's the last time you have ever really had data integrity issues that didn't become obvious quickly? Ultimately we're talking about application errors being caught at the database level, and that's a convenience that just isn't worth the cost.
The main cause of this is that I want to use the Fulltext indexing in MySQL and it is only supported by MyISAM.
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Posted by Joel
Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:39:00 GMT
Sunday I went exploring Nob Hill looking for places to eat. I'm mostly right in the middle of a ton of residential. There's corner convenience stores, but not much else.
The Gallery Cafe is on the end of my block and I've already been there a bunch. I did find a small sushi restaurant up the hill. Walking past California opened up a bunch of other places and I went to a place down there and got a burger and fries. Found another cafe that was too packed with hipsters on laptops to sit down so I moved on.
Now I need to find Chinese places.
I stayed up too late playing Warcraft on Sunday. Playing by myself no less. Although this was largely because I wasn't that tired, as I'd slept in really late.
I'm already getting kind of bored of the game. I'm already thinking of what else I can do with my time after work and errands. Sure, I could pick up a constructive hobby or something, but I kind of want to just do something fun. I'd play another game but Warcraft is about the only game available on the Mac (ha).
The Daily Show is on too damned late so I'm going to try to catch the evening rerun instead.
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Posted by Joel
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 23:31:00 GMT
Yesterday Justin came into town and we went to the SF MOMA. We watched Drawing Restraint 9, the avant-garde film by Matthew Barney. It starred Bjork as well.
For the most part I found the movie interesting to watch. The tea ceremony part in particular was my favorite, as I was able to just completely zone out and watch their graceful movements. The bit where they cut each other to pieces was pretty difficult to watch, though. And dragging the huge whale turd through a restrained oval of petroleum jelly (the "field") which had had its midsection removed might have been a bit much.
And while I am skeptical of modern art, I have to admit the imagery from that movie isn't likely to leave me anytime soon. What an odd concept.
We didn't have a ton of time for the rest of the museum but my favorite bit was a sculpture of sorts which was basically a huge structure you could walk into, with spiky metal pyramids exciting it from all angles. Once you walked in, it was like you were inside a kaleidoscope. Really incredible.
Afterwards Justin and I walked around the city. Through Union Square to Chinatown to North Beach. We went to the City Lights bookstore, as I knew Justin would like it. And then we got some food at Cafe Puccini, which I didn't really like. Finally we walked back to his car in SOMA through the financial district and marveled at the buildings and the forces they represent.
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Posted by Joel
Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:23:24 GMT
The last few days were oddly stressful at work, I guess because I'm spending most of my time right now experimenting with various methods of speeding up some new features. I've already learned a lot about database optimization. I've never really worked on data sets this large, or on a site this popular, so it is an excellent learning experience, and thus far I've been pulling my weight pretty well. At this point, I've expanded my skillset to the point I could probably land system administrator or database administrator jobs with a big company if I wanted to, in addition to software engineer. I like this job in particular, though, because it lets me exercise all of them.
Wednesday after work I worked out for an hour. I pushed myself to burn more calories on the bike than I was before, but I can tell I'm a bit tired lately, probably because I've been somewhat sick all week. I continued to read Snow Crash, which has more action than before, but I tire of waiting for the mysteries to be solved. Maybe I'm just impatient.
Then I played some Warcraft. We did some Battlegrounds and lost every game, it was pretty miserable.
Today I attempted to watch my diet more strictly and did a good job of it. After work, I played on my warlock, and Will and I brutalized the same three people over and over. Then we played some more Battlegrounds on our main characters, and this time we did much better. I love when the battles are intense, and I know that my heals landing properly can really make or break a territory we control; it's really a lot of fun. We love to trap unsuspecting intruders, as our characters can turn invisible.
And about an hour ago I stopped playing, because I refuse to let myself stay up too late. I admit already I'm playing more than I thought -- 2 or 3 hours a night the last three nights. Time I would have previously spent chatting with people online, flipping through channels, reading news. Is it so bad if I spend that time doing something fun?
And still I feel like I should push myself to do something else with that time, to pursue an art or something. But I am already focused on two things for the time being: my work and my fitness. Should I really feel guilty for trying to relax every evening and just have some geeky fun? I don't know.
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Posted by Joel
Wed, 23 Aug 2006 06:58:00 GMT
Been an interesting few days. Monday I ended up signing up for WoW again. Fear not, though, I'm only going to do PvP. Honestly, I mainly signed up because I have some friends who play, and there's no other game I have to kill time on this Mac. It's been a lot of fun so far, but I am wary of the game's addictive qualities; we'll see how it is a week from now. In my defense, though, I never really was all that addicted to the game. Even when I felt lots of obligation to play a lot from my guild, it was a constant argument, and I eventually left over it. Now, I don't even have a guild, and I'm not trying to progress in any way, so I should have no obligations of any sort. It's been over six months and I'm tired of telling my friends I can't even PvP with them, when really I want to, so I signed up.
I watched the Anthony Bourdain where he is, by astounding coincidence, in Beirut at the time the captures happen and the Israeli attacks start. It starts with him enjoying the Beirut cuisine, people, and nightlife, but then the attacks start and he spends a week or so trapped there, as Israel had destroyed the airport, and it's sad to see his slow and steady increase in optimism towards life and the world suffer the severe blow it took while witnessing what he did.
Today after work I went and saw the Mountain Goats. I like the guy a lot, but am disappointed with the more overtly sad tone of the new album. On top of that, the dude showed up in typical emo style; dyed black hair just long enough to land in his eyes, so he had to constantly flip or push it out of the way. This is not his typical fashion, normally he's a geeky type; I think he's trying too hard to appeal to his audience. The crowd were hipsters, of course. It was at the Haight Amoeba. Regardless, in between his overly somber tunes, he was quite a funny person. The highlight of the show was one of the two fun songs he played, Golden Boy. The other was Jenny. Afterwards he expressed annoyance that people thought he was a "funny" songwriter and had resolved to stop writing such enjoyable music. I don't know why he doesn't embrace it.
Did laundry, then played WoW with Will and Ben, and now I'm going to bed. Yay.
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