9:20 AM 4/29/2006
Today I have to make up for yesterday. There were a lot of things I should have done. I chose instead to wander around the city until mid-afternoon, then take a nap, watch TV, and fuss around at the edges of the mess in my apartment.
Yesterday’s Journey
With the weather so nice, and the book Great Society Subway in my hands, I decided to take a walk around Capitol Hill. I took the 42 to K Street, but as I was waiting, I realized that the 90 busses all go past Union Station. That could be my way back. Use the train station as a base camp, and keep my options open. Reading about the subway meant I had a craving to look at some underground stations, but I see plenty of those on my trips to school, so it could wait. I also like the new Circulator bus, and I’ll ride it for no good reason. Every extra bus ride is free for me - I get part of the cost of a weekly pass reimbursed on my paycheck, so I take the bus every chance I can, and the Circulator is included. From Union Station I walked east along F St., then down 5th. Capitol Hill is one of the nicer areas of DC. The architecture is fabulous and the trees are healthy. I zig-zagged for a while, stopping at Murky Coffee for an espresso, and passing Eastern Market. I went along East Capitol until I got to Lincoln Park, then I orbited the park for a while, checking out the different building styles. I like to fantasize that the whole of DC is that nice, so when I reached the edges where the buildings are shabby and there are not so many trees, I wandered back. The 96 bus passes by Lincoln Park, so I caught it at Tennessee Avenue. I brought a sketch book, but of course I didn’t draw anything. My priority is to move at a brisk pace, see as much as I can, and not attract too much attention, since people are more suspicious than ever. No doubt if I linger somewhere, or try to take photographs, I’ll get a street hassle.
Posted in infogami-blog | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:20:00 GMT
8:30 AM 4/27/2006
Today’s going to be one of those days when the good things that happen are an annoyance because I have to pay attention to my responsibilities. Today is not Leah’s last day, but it is the last day all three of us will be at work in my department. Operations. We’re going out for Indian food at lunch. I have so much to do it isn’t funny. I like Indian food, but taking a break from work is only going to cause me anxiety today. And I won’t be able to stop thinking of my dismal future in this organization. I think they suspect that I won’t want to stay. I would like to set them on the right path towards maintaining their website. If they try to hire a real computer person it’s going to be a rude awakening, so they’re going to have to muddle through. As an extra straw for the camel’s back this morning, I went to log on to Constant Contact, and the 60 day Free Trial expired. Today was the BIG DAY. I didn’t prepare to do it the old way, and I stayed late yesterday ironing out the message format. So I have to authorize payment over their website. Everything seems like a lot of money to me, but it should be fine: Supposedly we were paying more to do the listserv with our web host.
I was looking at the freshly painted walls in my apartment, and the mountain of badly stacked boxes in the middle of the living room. I think I preferred it the old way. Honestly. I don’t really think much about the walls. The apartment is so small and packed with stuff that it’s the stuff that gets my attention. I have an awful lot of books, old papers & notes, and not much actual furniture. I like to cover the walls with visually stimulating things. Paintings & posters for instance.
I don’t really see the edges because I have plenty to concentrate on in the center. Take it one step further: When I really sit down to concentrate on what I’m doing, it doesn’t much matter where I am. I just need to be close to the resources. At home those are the books, but with most of what I do it means a computer. But it also means electricity. I couldn’t be homeless and still function the same way. I probably couldn’t live in a car. But I CAN live in a very shabby apartment and be happy. So when the landlord comes along saying he wants to make the place nice for me, he doesn’t know me well enough. I’d rather just have lower rent.
Another related fact: I don’t like office lighting. I have a desk lamp at work, and it’s the right kind of light directed at the task at hand. It seems absurd to light the whole room. I’m not using most of the room. The ability to see the things I’m not working on is a detriment.
Posted in infogami-blog, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:30:00 GMT
9:24 PM 4/26/2006
I realized today the major problem with work: I’ve been able to do a lot of new things. But now they need me to go back to doing old things I used to do. It’s not a very exciting prospect. My boss made a remark today about how I had managed to avoid some of the more annoying work in our department. While I understand her point, it’s still misguided. I did things I was able to do, and sometimes that work was also very annoying. It’s just that nobody else was capable of it. Web drudgery is still drudgery. For all the times management was dazzled by something I did - as if I were a magician, and they would never figure out the trick - they essentialy cannot afford for me to do what I am good at.
I see some perverse element of the class struggle operating here. Christina & I walked around during the immigration march on the Mall a couple weeks ago. You inevitably hear discussions of how we need illegal immigrants because middle class white people refuse to do crappy jobs. And, I just read “Peking Story” with tales of the Chinese communists destroying what they could of a culture, leveling everybody. I’ve got no conclusions tonight. Tomorrow I’ve got work, then school, and hopefully I’m on the road to sorting out my career. I just can’t seem to help the fact that I’m smart and apathetic. I’m much more interested in what I can know than in what I can do. And what’s more, I don’t see the point in doing something by hand when a computer could do it.
Posted in infogami-blog, web-craft, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:24:00 GMT
8:06 AM 4/25/2006
Today wasn’t so bad. I listened to the BBC on WAMU from 4:30 to 5am, then dragged myself into the shower. It turns out that my favorite neighborhood coffeeshop doesn’t open until 6:30. I’ve been there at 6:55 many times, and I always fail to look at the hours when they’re open. That altered my schedule a little: I just missed a bus I would never have caught anyway, and I didn’t bring a snack for the bus stop, so I read a book.
Ron the IBM tech was sitting in his van out front, and our building was still locked. We got in, I spilled some coffee on my jacket when the door bumped me in the stairway, then I was on the phone to get the early birds to log off. Who knew it would be so busy at 7am?!? I expected the Airport store to be open, but our Mail Order guy was logged in too.
Without getting too technical, I’ll just say that The Programmers run the Unix box. It’s an IBM RS6000. I know what I need to know to function on a daily basis. There’s no reason for me to go mucking around on the command line. I couldn’t actually remember how to reboot, despite the fact that I used to do it every Sunday morning for a couple of years. I haven’t got the slightest clue how these ‘concentrators’ are configured in the system, or anything else like print queue and network. And I assume that with the right teacher, I could learn it in a few days.
The Programmers and I have developed a private language for our daily needs. In the mean time, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the wider world of computer technology, so when a technician comes out or talks to me on the phone, it’s like he’s speaking in a foreign language that I’ve heard before: I’m not fluent, but we communicate somehow. And there are plenty of misunderstandings. That is painful for me. My Concentrator is his RAN, and I know that. Do I know how they are ‘chained’ or which ‘address’ this one has? Sort of. Does he know what I mean by ‘sa10’, the particular part that died? Not a clue.
Posted in infogami-blog, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:06:00 GMT
8:24 AM 4/24/2006
I’ve got the final exam in bis315 tonight. I still have to write a bit online, but I don’t know when I’m going to get the chance. One of the concentrators at work died yesterday. I’d better explain: We’re still mostly using dumb terminals on our Unix box, in addition to telnet sessions from the PCs. All the cash registers and line printers are on serial ports, along with the majority of recieving and information desk terminals. There hasn’t been an overwhelming need to cross over to PCs, and the cost has been high until recently. To handle all these serial ports, we have a rack of concentrators. Ten of those with sixteen ports each. Five stores and a wharehouse don’t need 160 ports, though, so there are lots of empty spaces. When one dies, we can move ports around to accomodate. The main problem is that I have to ask the programmers to have port settings changed - it’s above my user level.
So today I’ve got extra hassles here at work, and only a test to look forward to.
UPDATE:
4:01 PM 4/24/2006
I’m meeting the IBM service guy at 7am tomorrow morning to have him replace the part. He had another 7am appointment that fell throught. On the Plus Side: This minimizes disruption to everyone but me.
Posted in infogami-blog | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 25 Apr 2006 01:24:00 GMT
Again with the Weather: I was getting tired of really nice days where I was cooped up in the office. Today doesn’t cause me that problem.
Posted in infogami-blog | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 24 Apr 2006 01:17:00 GMT
Well, I certainly got that rain I was worried about. At least I didn’t have to go anywhere today.
My apartment is very slowly taking shape after the painting disruption. The bathroom is easy - it’s small. The kitchen comes next, since I use it every day, I’m there enough. Next is the bedrooms, just comfortable enough at first to accommodate sleep, and now a bit more livable with the bookshelves back up, the stereo, TV, and my keyboard. I haven’t even touched the living room except to try to find things. There’s plenty of room in the closets, but I’d like to review what’s in every box before I stash it away so that maybe I can remember what is where.
Part of the slow progress is that I’m putting more of my energy into school and reading other books. This session hasn’t been hard, but it still takes up a good amount of time.
Posted in infogami-blog | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:27:00 GMT
1:02 PM 4/21/2006
I thought it was supposed to rain today. So far it hasn’t. I got laundry done, and I was sure it would rain on the way home from the laundromat, but that was hours ago. I’ve done lots of Friday morning stuff: Groceries, schoolwork, reading. I was going to take a little walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the cool weather before holing up in the cafe with my laptop, but I saw the 42 bus pulling up, so on a whim I caught it. I read so much on the bus during my communte that I almost prefer the bus for reading. Well… sometimes.
Supposedly my landlord is ‘installing’ a fire extinguisher today. He talked about it when the painters were finished two weeks ago, and yesterday their office called me at work to predict that it would happen today. I think maybe it will happen today, but it reminds me of all the times he talked about it. Talk, as we know, is cheap, but it’s not the Great Wall of China, it’s a fire extinguisher. For months now I have told anyone who would listen that he could have dropped one off any day. And why the sudden interest in fixing up the place? Nothing he does will impress me now, because years of inaction are what I remember.
There’s one more week of these classes (bis220 & bis315), then it’s two new classes the week after. I need to remember to find the textbooks through work. Speaking of that, I got off the bus in Dupont & shopped for a few minutes. I spotted “Maps of Time” by David Christian, and I was basically done. I’m not sure when I’m going to read it, but sooner than most of the other books I’ve got.
Posted in infogami-blog, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 21 Apr 2006 18:02:00 GMT
7:15 PM 4/20/2006
I was reading the wrong chapter for BIS220 class tonight. Professor Xu changed things at the last minute, but it’s no problem. I am glad I looked at “Information Systems Development” because I can use that information at work. He also doesn’t hold our feet to the fire anyway. He just started lecturing on “Computer Security”. He filled in a lot of grades on the electronic gradebook, so I can see that I’m doing just fine.
Posted in infogami-blog | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 21 Apr 2006 00:15:00 GMT
I feel a little pinched for time right now. I promised myself I would get better at writing something meaningful in these short intervals, so here goes…
There’s a hybrid department at work called “Administrative/Marketing”, and I’m part of it for some hours a week. Several people are leaving, so there is a rapid compression of duties. I spent most of today on Marketing, but my old job was so schizophrenic that I have always been hard pressed to say what I was really working on from one moment to the next. Maybe if I think really hard I’ll discover it was all CuteOverload and WebSudoku, or the usual news & weather suspects.
Whatever I do, I’m splitting now to enjoy a little real weather outdoors, (Even though I love those animated radar composites!) and get to class a little early to review the textbook. We’re finally getting into real Business Information System type topics. Surely, I’ll have more opportunities to type tonight.
Posted in infogami-blog | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 20 Apr 2006 20:15:00 GMT
