A few times on the bus, I would be too tired to read effectively. My eyes could not scan text. Sleep would come for me, I could fight it off, but I would lose my place, take a breath, look at the page, and islands of words would pop out at me. Some phrase I wasn’t reading would take center stage. I would consider that phrase, but then have to backtrack for a while, and be unable to identify the last place I was aware of reading. What good is it to work so hard if I’m useless half my waking life? That’s what always pisses me off about the school grind. I couldn’t get federal loans taking part time classes, so I’m forced to work at too intense a pace, or nothing at all. Heck, I already know most of the stuff. But it’s the doing that always gets in the way. I could actually be learning at about twice the pace, but school assignments actually get in the way of learning. Now I won’t argue that I learn something by doing that work - my argument is that a) I’m not aware of what I’m learning, and b) the opportunity cost is too high. I could be spending that time and effort learning much more.
School is in a different bind, and I sympathise with them. When there are three people in a required class, nobody has to spell it out to me that something isn’t adding up. Statistics had three. BIS220 had four, eventually. Visual Basic was five. I think Web Design is six. Meanwhile, Project Management is about 20. It seems weird to say it, but I have ‘special needs’, and I thought this school was equiped to handle it, but I’m special even for them. There are a lot of students there who are my age, and have basically no clue. They don’t have the experience I have, or the focus on learning, reading, and knowledge that I had from an early age. I certainly know too much already, but like Socrates, I also knew for most of my life that it was only scratching the surface. So to this day, I see my priority is to lean more, not do more. Eventually, there is a point where it is time to start doing. I believe - I hope - that day is not receding into the future indefinately. I consider this writing to be an activity that draws that day closer. Because I’ve got linguistics on the brain right now, I’ll peddle one of my core beliefs: Children don’t start talking in full sentences one day after years of just absorbing - they blabber nonsense, and little bits of sense start to congeal, and it’s never over. We manage to communicate somehow, but we’re forever trying it out. I’m no different. I don’t suddenly understand projects or operations. I have to see it in action for a while, then try my hand at it. But in school, there is a sort of amnesia: we were all required to take other classes first, but it always seems like nobody remembers any of it. So I’m trying to knit together what I gleaned from those other classes; But, it’s recursive! Follow me here, I might get a little deep: In this class, we say “There’s only Eight weeks - No, I take that back - 49 days! So we don’t have time to mess around, we’re going to have to skip right to the end.” What good is that? In the classes that were preparation for this one, we were in the exact same situation, and we said the exact same thing! So there’s a long chain of uninformed doing when we could have been preparing ourselves to do it right.
I must be some sort of Perfectionist.
Posted in infogami-blog, school | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 19 May 2006 15:45:00 GMT
It’s a nice day outside, I get to go to a convention downtown, but I’m still depressed. I function better with a lot of sleep. Last night I managed to get some, but it feels like I’m further behind, and not so refreshed that I could work harder. I just got back from doing laundry. My apartment is a big mess. I continue to do little things here and there when a momumental effort is necessary. When I hunt around trying to include everything in my laundry bag, it takes an inordinate ammont of time because I despair at all the things I don’t have time to do, and even try my hand at a few of them. So, an hour later, I’m on my way to the laundromat.
I’m still reading the Sarah Chayes book, but it’s slow work for a similar reason: every few pages she says something to make me stop and think. Her name in print didn’t make sense to me. I assume that I heard her reports on NPR, but I couldn’t place her. Somewhere in the book, she recounts a sales pitch she gave at a town meeting in Massachusetts, with a crowd of people frustrated about the outcome of our invasion of Afghanistan. Chayes rhymes with Hayes. And I figured it was corrupted Spanish, which makes more sense in print: think Chayes vs. Chavez. So trying to make it two sylables kept me from hearing it in my head properly. Now I can hear her in my memory on the radio four years ago. So that’s who she is. I get into this book, and it sends me away on naked examinations of my self. I have to think back. I never think I was traumatized by 9/11. But what sticks with me now is a sense that I didn’t have any response. It was one more symptom of a world gone mad, and I thought I already knew that. It was one more item in a long list of pushes in the wrong direction. The impact and the fall were garden variety violence writ large. For some reason it doesn’t bother us when that many people die gradually. We’re supposed to be reasonable. We’re not supposed to lash out in retaliation. It may be human nature, but that’s the real lesson. We do so much to be more than just monkeys attacking each other with rocks. Even if they are fancy rocks that can fly and explode. With that in mind, I read to the part where Chayes gets frustrated by her editor’s need for cliched stories, and goes out to interview Marines at the air base in Kandahar. Everybody was doing a “Marines at Christmas” story. The Marines are in foxholes. It’s a seige mentality. Afghans are starting to realize that the American troops are just another warlord force. When Chayes tells them what the locals say to her, one Marine responds “See, I knew they were bullshitting us.” The commanders said it was combat, but the Marines were not doing any fighting. I looked up from the book. I nearly cried. All this intelligence is used to construct clever ways to shirk responsibility. I think we’re in thrall to leaders who don’t care about us. It’s something more than the typical “ignorant masses” attitude of rulers. From before the election, I couldn’t fathom this president or any of his cronies ever being sincere. They didn’t seem like the right people to have on your side in a crisis, and they still don’t. I can’t imagine the people who would believe their lies - and the TV told me these people are Americans. But I’m an American. We must want someone to lie to us, but don’t I keep seeing evidence that we’re fed up? I can’t untangle the paradox.
Posted in books, infogami-blog | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 19 May 2006 15:02:00 GMT
BEA: BookExpo America is happenning. It’s the American Bookseller’s Association Convention, and it’s at the DC Convention Center right now. I thought I would be really excited about it, but I’m really bogged down in schoolwork this week, and every minute I’m not trying to catch up with all my responsibilities, I feel guilty. So there are plenty of important bookseller things to do… like, you know, PARTIES.
One more thing that ruins it for me is: I was going to get to see my girlfriend. She is on a school break, and she was planning to attend the convention. Now her Aunt has died, and she’s being dragged to the funeral in Delaware. It’s Friday and Saturday. My two days off, and the two main days of the convention. Gentle reader, I do care what you think, but you’ll have to allow me to vent some hot air here. I make no guarantees as to its accuracy: They all knew she had cancer. She has survived a lot longer than they expected. You can die any day, but we’ve known about this career-related event for more than a year now. I don’t think Christina was close to her aunt, her Grandparents are taking her along, and I would have expected her to say “have a nice time”, but she probably feels obligated to go. While I wouldn’t suggest an opportunistic, cynical sponging off the good graces of others, I would suggest casting off relationships that only drain away your vital energy to scant purpose. Never an easy calculus.
Becuase I can’t see Christina, and because we will now NEVER go to BEA together, I feel really bummed. It was not such a powerful dream, but I’m already letting go of it, and the convention just got here. It could be a cultural smorgasbord with delights at every turn, but that’s just too damn bad. I want to be able to pause parts of my life and return to them when I take care of other business, but that’s not possible. I’m less interested in everything all of the sudden.
I got my very own badge, so I plan to spend some time tomorrow walking the floor. I’m hoping to find it fascinating. But as I pause a moment to turn inward, here is what I find out about myself: It’s too late. I love books, I would probably rather spend the time reading. I don’t see my future in a bookstore. The past eleven years I’ve been working in the office of my bookstore. I’m even worried there is no future in bookstores - at least, not in bookstores as I know them. I’ve gone way past my loss of innocence. I can avoid being bitter by moving on to the next thing. And, that reminds me: What is the next thing for me? I have some clues, I’m collecting scraps of what I will need to get there, but I’m still quite lost.
Posted in infogami-blog, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 18 May 2006 16:48:00 GMT
Maybe I’m just really tired, but there’s a weird revelation dancing in front of me, and I don’t want to do anything I have to do. I just want to figure out the meaning of this half-formed idea in my head…
I started reading a galley of “The Punishment of Virtue” by Sarah Chayes. She was an NPR reporter dispatched to Pakistan to cover the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Years later she figured out that the pressure of coming up with an accurate story every week for All Things Considered, or whatever else, meant they got the story wrong. That’s interesting enough, and remind me to follow up on that some time, but as I sat on the bus trying to read, my biggest problem was keeping track of everybody’s name. With this mundane issue to hand, I started reviewing in my mind all the other books that caused the same problem. I didn’t get far.
Don’t be disappointed, because something else happened next: Last night’s Project Management class came back to life in my tired brain. Some phrase in the book suddenly evoked a whole range of compaints I haven’t been able to voice. Kandaharis have a lot of cash. Every interloper throughout history had to pay them off. They run a toll booth on the Silk Road. They’re like the children of divorce, but transported to the Great Game of Central Asia. Everybody wants to buy their love. Nobody ever succeeds for long. International redevelopment aid goes in, the goods are sold, somebody pockets the money, and no workers are hired. Projects don’t accomplish anything, but managers sign off on it anyway.
I nearly fell out of my seat on the bus. How could I have been so blind?
About Class: We got a damn good score for some piece of crap I handed in at the last minute. Meanwhile, I get really good scores on all my other work, so I’m in good position if the group project flops. I was wracked with guilt because I should have been working on it much earlier. That way I might have seen where more work was needed; where I needed to direct our efforts. I just handed in what there was when I reached the deadline. The more I worked on it, the more questions I had. A spreadsheet with budget details is a far cry from a couple hours of informal discussion. The professor’s comment boiled down to “Do you guys even know what you’re doing?”
Of course not. We don’t have a clue. This isn’t the way to find out, either. I thought I was skilled at breaking apart tasks and figuring out details. I just do what comes naturally. I’ve never really known why I do anything. I’ve never been the source. I want someone else to tell me why. That’s why I wanted to preach to my group about the Customer. When there’s money involved, there’s a Customer. Let the Customer decide on goals, then I can start my work. This is the central struggle. On the one hand, I’m only going to get good at doing it by practicing it. But on the other hand, I need to see it happen. I can’t make up fictions about Project Management until I’ve lived through some real examples. Suddenly the thought of doing this in an eight weeek class seems terribly misguided.
I won’t know what I’m doing until I can tell it as a story. There were things I couldn’t enter on a spreadsheet. We might have mentioned in passing: We can omit X, because of Y. So where do I mention the things I chose to omit? The assignment doens’t say anything about that. But once again, I know what I think is important, and it doesn’t match what I’m being told. At the same time, I haven’t lived with that truth long enough to be sure I can defend it. It’s not a matter of self confidence. I have to have confidence in the equipment, and I won’t have that until I’ve accomplished simpler goals using that equipment.
Posted in infogami-blog, books, school | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 16 May 2006 12:55:00 GMT
I finally caved in to the warning that my Anti-Virus software has expired. PCCillin is a fine product, and I highly reccomend it for WinXP. I never liked Norton or McAfee, and I stumbled on TrendMirco as a pleasant alternative. The subscription renewal is essentially synonymous with upgrade, so I worked on other stuff while it took over an hour to downlad the new version. Last year I got something out of order and screwed up the installation. Unfortunately, the helpful messages are so cryptic that you have no idea what’s happening anyway. Things seem to work best when you just click the OK buttons, but how do you know it’s right? Anyway, it uninstalled the old version, then installed the new one, and a couple of reboots later here I am. I don’t care for the fancy user interface. It’s too much like a cartoon. I like a mean command line that you can see means business. Besides, I don’t approve of a program wasting all those processor cycles drawing fancy pictures on the screen when it’s supposed to be scanning files for viruses. I’ve muddled around with text-based configuration files, and I’d be happy to do that here. In the mean time, Windows is getting hysterical about the anti-virus software being turned off. Memo to Microsoft: You’re not my mother! I spoke to her yesterday (Mother’s Day in the US), and she does not write the software used on the majority of the worlds Personal Computers. When she says “Be Careful”, I say “Okay Mom”. When Microsoft says “OMG! Your AV might be Out of Date!”, I say “Your friend Linux is really Cute. Is she seeing anybody? I’d let her move in on my Hard Drive any time!” Hmm… What am I doing at work? Oh right! Working. Enough of this nonsense.
Posted in infogami-blog, computer-interface | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 15 May 2006 14:57:00 GMT
I’m still probably not working hard enough on shcool. I’ve got a short day today at work becuase I stuck around later than I wanted on Thursday night. I would have liked to use that time Thursday to get some school stuff done before the group meeting, and theoretically have a firmer foundation. Instead I got another domino effect. I could work on Project Management today, but I had to put off the Web Design class.
There’s a sort of illusion that I get sometimes when I accomplish a bunch of stuff, then I can’t see any more objectives. I know they’re waiting for me somewhere, and I should keep moving, but I can’t remember what they are, and my notes don’t make any sense. That happens to me at work all the time: If I work really hard on something dull, I get left in a haze. The task still owns me after it’s done - or especially if I ran out of time and had to leave it to the fates. Too much brain activity, perhaps? Not necessarily a good thing. It’s good to know what you can afford to ignore.
Posted in infogami-blog, school, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 14 May 2006 19:19:00 GMT
Here I am again, right up to the deadline. I just handed in the project budget documents on the course website. I would keep adding stuff to it, but I am sleepy, and I am supposed to have it handed in at midnight. I still get upset about the whole thing. I just don’t know all the details.
Posted in infogami-blog, school | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 14 May 2006 05:14:00 GMT
I’m sorry but I couldn’t resist posting this stuff. It’s from an email I sent to my girlfriend, and it’s just so perfectly what I’m worried about these days. I just started riffing and there it was. And to think they were threatening to fail me in High School English class and ruin my graduation. Take that! Mrs. Wanner!…
My group meeting last night was kind of fun. I find it really hard to work with people who are total strangers, and I like to get in a few minutes of socializing. It was four out of five people - not so bad. The documents we have to hand in are all very easy to do, EXCEPT that we have to all agree on the figures because the prof is going to grill us on the presentation. I remember that from my “Nightmare on Business Street” class. Oh wait - it was called “Introduction to Business.” Why did I think it was… Oh, never mind.
I was having a little trouble with them on the ‘meta-concept’. Instead of us actually doing real work, we’re coming up with a fictional project, and explaining hypothetically how that would be accomplished. That creates a lot more confusion than it should. Basically, there is no truth. It’s all pretend. So we have to decide on things without any basis for the decisions. And when I have to stop them and say: “Look, this is how they do it in the Business World”, I’m really just blowing smoke out my ass! But I do it anyway. It’s like they’re missing the fundamental purpose of life itself. The professor didn’t bother to mention this. If you called me last night, you would have found out sooner: Somebody says “Let’s do X.” That’s either a) the person who’s going to do it by assembling a team, or b) some business executive who wants to delegate the whole thing. These guys seemed to miss entirely the stuff about customers. They wanted to know how we come up with the ‘Discount Rate’. How the hell am I supposed to know? And then again, suddenly I started blowing smoke out of my ass! Delegating a project means some CEO is handing out a packet of money. Unless the whole thing is speculative. My team members were completely lacking any sense of context. And I’m thinking “Why does it have to be me explaining this?”
Posted in infogami-blog, school | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 13 May 2006 01:32:00 GMT
Ugh. I have a group meeting tonight for my Project Management class tonight. Just like last week, I got home Wednesday night and passed out, so I didn’t get to do the routine classwork that I thought would give me a better sense of how to direct the group. Monday night we stayed for a little while after class, and they were getting fussy because I didn’t have assignments to give them. Damn. It’s still early. And these endurance test days are not necessarily improving the quality of my thought. My week is structured to make Friday and Saturday prime opportunities to do homework. Not Tuesday and Wednesday. Strike Wednesday off the list for extra sleep, and there’s Thursday: Thursday is a good day to start working, but that’s the day three of us must meet. I like the idea of meeting soon after class, but it can’t be too soon. That doesn’t give me any time to prepare, or even just do the other classwork. We’re supposed to do mock-ups of a Work Breakdown Schedule in MS Project, and a Zero Based Budget in Excel. But those are some of the same things we have to do for the group project.
I don’t think you can even find five people with the same days off. This has always been the problem with me and Christina. I don’t work Friday or Saturday, but she’s always had jobs where working Friday and Saturday were manditory. Meanwhile, everybody in class has other classes on other nights. Fancy that! I think all four of the others have Tuesday night free. That’s how we rescheduled the Memorial Day group presentation. Maybe in class we should have been grouped by days of the week we have off. Even then, there might still be people with variable weeks.
Posted in infogami-blog, school | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 11 May 2006 19:20:00 GMT
I was told in class that this will be a particularly bad week for homework. In a way that’s good. When you front-load the work, you’re not lulled into complacency. You start out with a realistic idea of what needs to be done, and you don’t have one of those cartoon-anvils fall on your head later. Still, it’s driving me crazy.
Right now I’m on the phone with our programmer. We’re extending the Point-of-Sale system to include the cafe. (In Courthouse, but it isn’t built yet - there was an independent operator in that space, but he’s gone now. There must have been some ‘artistic differences’). Yesterday they loaded a new version of the cash register program to account for the fact that food gets taxed differently in Virginia. There probably wasn’t a provision for tax categories at all in the old version. They probably had to update the Database Schema for food items. Why have I been on hold so long?… No, wait, the line just dropped. My ear was getting sweaty.
But there were some User Interface irregularities with the new version yesterday, and it had to be pulled. Since the cafe isn’t open yet, there’s still time to work out the bugs, but today we got an error running Sales Batch Update. As you can probably guess, sales data is being read out of some journal file, processed for accounting, and stored in another format. Those file records are a little different now. Not every store runs this sales analysis every day, so we had just the one problem today, and it is supposed to be fixed for now.
Posted in infogami-blog, olssons, school | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 10 May 2006 13:30:00 GMT
