WOW. My half-sister Grace just added me on Facebook. This is probably the most amazing use of technology to me yet. I didn't even realize tweens were allowed to use Facebook. =)

So... I created a protest sign and picketed outside of Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue tonight. I had the misfortune to pay $14 last Thursday night to see the catastrophe that is Transformers (2): Revenge of the Fallen, and was traumatized enough to decide that, since Jeff and I were going to see The Hangover, I might as well help try to save some people while I waited for him.

Transformers 2 is one of the worst movies it's been my displeasure to see. It's so confusingly bad that it's hard to understand why nobody spoke up and pointed out that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes during production. Jose had warned me that the movie was bad, but I went anyways. And suffered through a shambling illogical plotless developmentless CGI screensaver of a movie. I went in expecting a horrible movie and was still impressed at how bad it was, even with the glossy sheen of hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at it.

I was pleased that my protest seemed well received. I got some thumbs ups, some high fives, and got to talk about movies and merits of movies with interesting people. I feel like I saved some people a waste of money and time. My sign read "Transformers 2 is a terrible movie! See up or hangover instead" (trying to be constructive here). We left the sign out on the ticket kiosk during the movie, and I was pleased as punch that it was still there when we got out of The Hangover. I ended up taking it to Bre's concert later (using it to warn people in Ballard while walking to the tavern), and made a "Happy Birthday" sign out of the other side of it.

All in all, quite fun. I think this new plan to have protest sign materials always on hand in my car may work out well.

We were in San Francisco the day that the California Supreme Court ruled on the challenges to Proposition 8. I felt sick that courts upheld the rights to take away privileges from a minority. I'm happy that the tide is slowly turning in this country.

A week later, I got an e-mail from a friend asking for e-mail addresses. He's been in a long-term relationship with his partner, and I was thrilled for a couple days with the notion that they might be making whatever sort of commitment to each other that the State allows them to make. I haven't heard back on that, but I still love the idea. They're such great people.

Later that week I found out that one of my lesbian mentors is still in her relationship ten years later. That was also pleasing: she's a beautiful, smart, talented woman and again I'm glad she found someone to share this world with.

And then midway through the next week I found out that one of my childhood idols was gay.

I don't know how you decide that commitments in gay relationships aren't worthy of recognition. That seems so heartless to me. I guess it's easier if you don't actually know that you know gay people. Not every gay person is the Capitol Hill gay-accented queer.

I remember that one of the falling out moments between my biological dad and myself was when we were discussing gays in some fashion, and he quoted and believed in Leviticus 18:22, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." I was really repulsed by that prejudice. I think that was one of the last three times I talked to him or so.

For our trip to San Francisco, I dug up my California travel books collection. Among the books, I had an old California Thomas Guide and a "California for Dummies" - the two opposite ends of the travel spectrum, as it were. I kept and used the other two, but gave away the other two books at work on the "free books" table. I passed by half an hour later and laughed my butt off as I saw that the Dummies guide was already taken but the Thomas Guide was still there. It lingered most of the day and I cackled to myself each time.

I sent out an email asking for a code review at work, and I got the comment "Looks absolutely fabulous of course" back from a reviewing senior developer who I've never met nor heard of before. I have no idea who he is, but it was really pleasing to think that I have a positive reputation around such a wide team. And then, after I did a bunch of quick turnaround work on an important matter for management, I was walking by one of that team as they were in a hallway meeting talking with a bunch of other people, and I got a "hi Zach!" call-out as I was walking by and was tickled.

Of course I probably will f-ck up shortly and ruin the positive streak, but it's cool to have the delusion that people respect my skills.

I don't know why nobody told me today how extremely fey my new black low v-neck made me look today, but I'm extremely cross at the world.
Oh gosh did I look horrid. This shirt is going into the Goodwill pile with extreme haste.

How come Ewan McGregor takes off for a motorbike trip around the world, yet Shia LaBeouf has time to be in all the movies? Can they swap roles? Johnny Depp and Ewan seem to be such amazingly talented actors when they're "on". Shia is a good actor when he's not in the movie. Ewan has that delight in what's going on... Shia just doesn't work for me.

I think I'm going to make a couple mix tapes for people just because. I'm debating whether to attach a note "actually from my own CD collection".

Related thought: Is "Woke Up New" by The Mountain Goats one of the top ten songs ever? It may be.

Unrelated thought: maybe some days listening to advice is good.

Gosh this is fun.

Don't we need another Garden State soundtrack? Maybe a couple?

The thing that I love about life is discovery. I think. That's been my conclusion so far. Can I realign what I'm doing around that? I don't know.

Remember when you made someone a mix tape with your prized collection of 12-20 tapes/CDs and felt it was one of the best things in the world? I kind of miss those days.

Greg getting sick and canceling out on our date to go to Mae was pretty disappointing. But! The best thing about flying solo is you can go crazy. So... given that the Mae concert started at 8PM... but they had two opening acts ... and Flight of the Conchords started at 7:30 with one opening act .........
... I ended up racing over to the Paramount, quickly scooped up a ticket from the scalpers (booo ... but um thanks), and settled in for a hilarious concert. I ran into Jim and Carrie who had managed third row seats (those weasels) but had to high-tail it to make it to Mae at Neumo's. The guy at the door at Neumo's didn't even bother checking my ticket: he looked at me oddly and said "you realize the concert is about half over right?" and I nodded enthusiastically and he just waved me through.

It was super! I now have a man-crush on their lead singer, Dave. He has a great voice. True, they have a lot of middling songs... but their good songs rock.

You can tell Mae is the band for someone like me because:

their last 2 songs featured 3-d videos for you to enjoy with your Mae 3-d glasses

they're putting all the proceeds from this year's digital releases to charities such as Habitat for Humanity <-- read that article and love them

their latest EP is scratch & sniff

They're my Buffalo Tom Lite and I adore them.

Tonight was a Pie Auction, Hoe Down, and Kissing Booth with the Aerialistas. I raced over there after our soccer game and was again soooo glad I went. I sadly forgot my cowboy hat, but ... live pie auctions are hilarious to me. The cookies at the bake sale were fabulous. I ended up winning two pies (one chocolate and one apple) and shared them with friends and the crowd and was simply beaming from how great it was. I ended up getting to take home all the left-over caramel apples, and will enjoy sharing those at work tomorrow.

It's been a great couple nights. Now I'll slog through having fifty people over tomorrow night, but hopefully Saturday I can make the Highland Games at last and keep the fun times rolling.

I played my first game of refereed competitive basketball in ... ten years last night. I begged Coach to leave me buried on the bench while I got back into the swing of things, and so made sure to sit lots, only subbing in towards the end of the "quarters". I watched in chagrin as in the "second quarter" our starters slowed down and didn't run back on their breakaways, but figured that they would sub out during the "second half". I came in that "quarter" a little later than I might have - those guys looked ragged - ......... and realized that we were playing two fifteen minute halves and that the game was nearly over. Oh brother.

I laughed my ass off inside. We ended up losing a game (50-45 or so) we should have won because we didn't have a good sub rotation even though we had more subs. I sat on the bench completely oblivious to the actual game clock when I should have been telling people to come out when they started dragging. *groan* Oh well, lesson learned.

My stat line was pretty abysmal, but I didn't play much. I spent most of my time trying just to figure out where everybody thought they were playing and how. I somehow expect other people to have the same level of sports knowledge I do (which isn't much!), so it's puzzling to me when people don't get how to play a simple 2-3 zone.

So far I am much reminded of the Kickball team semi-fiasco, where I realized that a lot of the people I know don't grok the basics of baseball. I guess I should join a football team to complete the Common American Sport Trifecta. =)

I felt pretty good about the game. I played some decent defense, had some good passes, and probably was around our most active player towards the glass. I'll definitely want to improve a lot more, but I feel like I'm already getting back to maximizing my minimal strengths out there. Now if I can just remember where I left my hops...

Gina and I were downtown on the waterfront taking pictures with our Flat Stanley and Flat Stella that our cousins gave us, and I wisely suggested we jaywalk since the light ahead was red. So brightlights peels out of the parking lot across the street without looking and nearly kills us - braking at the last second. She braked hard enough and was so shocked at nearly killing two people that tears appeared in her eyes as she blanched.

My reaction was strange. I wasn't sure whether to pull Gina forward out of harm's way or let her react (she could have probably gone back safely-ish too) as I yelled her name, and I let her step back. I think in retrospect that was a horrible idea and I should have wrenched her arm off pulling her clearly out of arms way. As for me, I took a step forward and got ready to karate kick the car and then jump on it - the loud kick hopefully stopping the driver by getting her attention at last, and the jumping onto the car saving my life.

All in all, dumb dumb dumb.

I'm extremely thankful I didn't lose a girlfriend.

It feels kind of cool to go into a meeting and be treated a little bit like a rock star. After that meeting I went to my office and bashed my head against some code for a while wondering how to solve something, wondering about some trade-offs, and was reminded that in some ways I'm an architect of my particular niche. There's unfortunately some days no one else to turn to. They don't tell you, as far as I know, in New Employee Orientation that at some point you'll likely be The Leader / Knowledge Base in various specific squirrely areas that you work on, making mistakes that affect millions, and doing the right thing that maybe only eight people notice. It's a quiet pressure that you don't usually notice, but then you watch the world and realize that what you're doing is surprisingly part of a lot of people's daily routines. Eek.

It's been said before, but Syon B was one of the better devs I've met, and a great guy. Really quiet, really kind, and just a dev god when it came to DirectShow. I remember one issue that he and I tracked over a year before getting lucky and figuring it out. That kind of long-term dedication to the really elusive issues is invaluable, and was of the many reasons I looked up to him. I've always believed that one of the worst things to happen to multimedia was Syon's death. I'm working on some thorny elusive background issues now, and it's kinda sad not to have that counterpart to work with. That of course has been the case for some time, but I've just been dealing with a lot of stuff lately that was in his bailiwick, and it sucks to not have his expert advice nor his chiding laughter as I completely misunderstand something. He knew and he cared, and I loved that about him.

Gina was one of the people that was there for him as things progressed. It's one of the many ways in which I think she shows she is a great person with a loving heart, even if she'll never admit it. :)

I was volunteering at Circus Contraption's show on Sunday. I showed up and said hi to Lara briefly and then scurried away because after all she was warming up and I didn't want to get in her way. After the show ended I helped clean up and then stood around helplessly for a while trying to figure out what task to do next, when one of the pipsqueak helpers told me to "relax and mingle", and I felt mortified.

I'm so bad at being social.

The downside of going to meet Gina's extended family the weekend of March 6th was that I would miss out on the fun of opening night for Watchmen. I've had the 2007 "announcement" poster (with release date) hung outside of office at work for almost two years, so it was sad to have a conflict then. I ended up deciding to go to my first movie "advanced screening" ever as a result.

I've seen "advanced screening" offered for years, but don't recall ever going to one. I did a little research online and found that nobody seemed to ever mention how early to show up for them. I knew it was "first come first served", so I figured five hours early would be wise. Gina laughed at me and thought that two hours was more than enough, so I ended up compromising on being there a little over three hours early, and then having her, Patrick, and Fen join me whenever they finished up at work.

When I got there three hours early for the screening at Pacific Place, there were already thirty people in line. The first woman in the line asked me who the "weird blue guy" on my Watchmen lunchbox was, and the first guy in line swore at me under his breath. I figured they were probably semi-homeless people staking out places in line for money, and was pretty amused.

I pulled my books out my lunchbox and sat to reading. We were right opposite a nice little Mexican joint, so I picked up lunch for myself and a bunch of cokes and root beers for everybody else in line as a little "cool event" bonus. It was fun to meet the nice couple next to me - it was a pregnant woman and her boyfriend, who was enjoying getting drinks from the nearby restaurant a little too much. As he got tipsier, he reminded me more and more of Alex from Las Vegas, which was hilarious to me. I wanted to twist his baseball cap 45 degrees to complete the effect, but figured that might be a little much.

As time rolled on, the thirty people in front of me got joined by their friends until it was a rowdy mob of a hundred or so in front of me, with several hundred more behind me. The "in the know" people say that as long as you're in the line in front of the chowder house, you'll get in. We got in, but even with being person #31 in line, the theater was two-thirds full by the time we were in there.

The movie itself was pretty excellent, if too violent. I'll look forward to the "extended version" which should help flesh out the movie's story, and also help make characters such as Bernard more than an afterthought.

It was pretty cool to go to an Advanced Screening for the first time. It makes me think I need to reconstruct my list of people to go to movies with. I have some right now, but they're mostly mainstream movies people - "Wings of Desire" is playing in town, for example. I've already seen it, but I feel like there's no one in my movie group who would want to see it these days. I could probably drag others to it... but I think I enjoy being dragged more than dragging. I need to find people who are interested in that kind of thing. Perhaps I shall join a movie club. =\

Hot damn! Some Big Shouldered People asked me why a particular multimedia crash happened, and I jotted off a quick "Oh It's MMSwitch.ax Again" without even thinking about it, and one of my dev debugging heroes double takes and asks why I would say that - and that leads me to finally getting the way to reproduce the crash in question (not just largely understand it, but be able to reproduce it at will and thus dug down to the precise badness they were doing). So I look good to the Big Shouldered People, and look good to a couple of my dev heroes. Plus it'll resolve a top IE crash near-term (um... don't install MMSwitch, it's bad) and there's a nice opportunity to see what we can do here for the future. A nice all-around win in a tough week.

And I got to resurrect my elementary school French in an attempt to politely ask a French anime group to stop redistributing this in their codec pack. Je m'appelle Zach. =)

This site (NSFW) is about the best site ever. It's fascinating seeing how clothes actually correspond to bodily curves. And to be reminded that Ze Germans are generally not into circumcision.

I was kind of worried after yesterday's bad luck of car destruction that today's midyear review would go oddly, but it turned out to go well. I work in such a nebulous space: it's hard to really know you're doing great work when there's always 200000 more things you could be doing to improve the software kingdom. But it went really well, so that's positive. We talked about my future, and I pointed out that while I don't have Feature Ownership (where I spend years developing one thing in depth) these days... I really enjoy working across the wide field I do. I do work on my core areas, but I also do a lot of smaller development work greasing the wheels for other teams, and they're evidently liking what I'm doing so far. *crosses fingers*

Instead, today's bad luck was reserved for the movie theater. Jeff and I had finished watching Taken (our review: great Jean Reno action/revenge-fantasy movie, but the final ending with She-Ra was stupid) when the movie theater burst into flames. OK, not quite. But as soon as the first line of credits showed up on the screen, everything instantly powered down and the fire alarms started flashing. (Excellent timing, I must admit.) Everybody had to flee the building in an orderly fashion. Later we learned that people were smoking in a non-smoking area and triggered the smoke detectors. How dumb is that?

We're hoping to have a fold-out kabbalah board game. The winner is basically the first one that reaches enlightenment, as long as they don't make a big thing of it.
-Alan Moore, speaking upon his Bumper Book of Magic

I was feeling rather cursed when on back to back to back days my glasses were shattered at soccer, my futon was broken at a party, and I found out that the firewire circuit on my video camera burnt out. Minor things continued on that vein on a near-daily basis for a week or two, and it to got to be pretty oppressive.

So when I was driving Gina and her work-friend home last night and my car died, I admit to being a little underwhelmed. I felt pretty bad for making her look less perfect in front of a coworker. I was impressed to find out this morning that the car threw a rod and destroyed the engine. That kind of thing takes skill!

My car's out of commission for a week. They're bringing in a new engine from Japan, and I'm in a loaner car for the duration.

I must admit to feeling a little paranoid right now.

On the plus side, I woke up this morning to this phone call:
    "Hello Zach, how is the loaner car working out for you?"
    "... uh ... fine?"
    "Great! Because you'll have it for about a week as we ship in a new engine."
, which was pretty hilarious in retrospect.

Some days when you're writing code and are not really sure of how that exact bit of code is going to work just right then, it can pretty hilarious to write: if( MAGIC ) { go_do_some_stuff(); ... Pseudocoding in "MAGIC" makes me laugh every time.

After having my hi-definition monitor, computer, and tuner card for over a year (and enjoying hi-definition movies), I finally set up hi-definition TV playback on my PC. I was pretty thrilled to finally get such a meaningless task off my queue. That queue is sadly long right now. I'm happy when I'm achieving minor victories such as "wash the roof". Having a house is a pain in the ass for a non-handy person like me.

Plus the problem of working on a bunch of great projects... is that you're working on a bunch of awesome projects. I've been working on projects all over Microsoft, and at this point my brain is fried from juggling so many things in such different areas so quickly. I long for a couple of quieter weeks where my brain can relax.

I've been reading Robert Reich's The Future of Success, written in 2001, and WOW is that book prescient and depressing. Each chapter I have reading is directly reflected later that afternoon in some calamitous news, and it's simply gotten to the point where I need to stop reading it because it's too depressing. There's an insightful chat here (again, from 2001!) that talks about the destruction of "loyalty" and corporate ties (subjects better covered by the book, of course).

So I've switched over to the light Who Can Save Us Now? I'll look forward to reading about the self-destruction of capitalism later on when it's not so amazingly relevant.

In today's episode, I turn out to be a spokesperson for Microsoft on a serious issue (an issue with pre-release software that was already known). That was pretty interesting. Maybe my mom can be proud of me. :D

I just had a meeting with my boss where we went over my massive work list and how I'm generally kicking ass over all of it - "This is done, this is done, this is waiting for test, this is waiting for test, this is waiting for that group, this is waiting for that other group" - and he gave me a hearty "Wow!" and other enthusiastic responses. I must admit I teared up a little.

I don't know if that's pathetic or not. I think it has a lot to do with my last boss just never talking to me (which is good because he trusts you enough to go off and do the right things, but bad because there's not a lot of "rock on!" moments) as well as believing that the changes I'm making will be pretty damned real-world useful.

I look forward to seeing how this all pans out.

I marvel at the lack of civility in this world at times. I can understand the lack of respect or appreciation for anyone other than one's own magnificent self. I simply don't understand how we're expected to work together or learn from one another without being able to communicate.

It truly baffles me. I may be an asshole or an idiot, but I'm kind of unfortunately someone that always likes to take the opportunity to help a brother out, and it just seems like that act of outreach more consistently brings out the ugliness in others lately. It sucks when you put several hundred hours into a project and get insulted and get called worthless (?) for not being quick enough with the excellence. It sucks when you're playing soccer and a guy jumps onto your shins (and you're standing!) cleat-first and there's blood running down your leg and his teammate says "That must be embarrassing..." to you - and then she follows up with "to you!" It sucks to bend over backwards to help someone to the point where you're thinking about them more than your own life, and they just can't get their shit together. It's hard for me to give up on people.

But I'm kind of tapped out right now. I've been thinking about actual useful and meaningful resolutions for the New Year, and one is to do only things for entirely selfish reasons for two weeks during the coming year. If I'm going to bend over backwards or make myself available to be spat upon and I'm not really getting anything out of it: why am I doing it? Rachel never believed in altruism. Then again, she twitters daily about how Spirit talks to her, so -- . It does seem that I expose myself to a lot of toxic people in my attempt to contribute back to the world around me, and maybe she was right to question why anybody would do that kind of thing.

I had enough ugliness from others in fifth grade (part of which is why only one and a half of my Two Front Teeth are real) to last me for a lifetime, and I do have a hellishly thick skin. I'm ego-formed enough that other's words don't bother me. But god, people's stupidity does. Idiots kill me in a way personal attacks can't ever touch me. Dumb people grate on me in a way that very little else can. I use "dumb" specifically versus "uneducated". I'm clearly Dumb about a lot of things and Uneducated in many fields, but it's the New Belligerence of Dumb that blows my mind and depresses me. Like the guy attacking me last week for working on a project that he wants so badly - but then berating me for not finishing fast enough (I'm done and have handed it off to another person to finish their work). His insulting me doesn't bother me, but the stupidity of insulting someone you want to do things for you boggles my tiny little mind. That type of belligerent stupidity is nails-on-chalkboard to me.

So I think I'm going to be pickier about dealing with noxious people, and absent myself from their presence faster. I've had a virtual headache for the past several months as the nut-jobs have popped out of the woodwork, and I suspect cutting bait faster will make my life much more joyous.

One of the best perks about my new job at MS is that I work with several geniuses. One of those geniuses is legendarily acerbic. He's also legendarily helpful, though: he's simply misconstrued as acerbic because he's pretty fantastic about establishing boundaries and quickly giving up on the thick-headed. I shall endeavor to learn from him.

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.