Balinares
Dec. 1st, 2009
12:32 am - NaNoWriMo debrief.
What with everything this month, I really thought I wasn't going to make it.
In the nick of time. Seven hours left.
This feels a little weird, and not as elating as last year, even though arguably last year was a win by technicality alone, with all the unrelated digression that took place when the words wouldn't come[1], while this year at least I wrote a coherent narrative.
But after the late start, the unplanned funeral trip and a few busy evenings of, among others, seeing to the kid, the whole thing became a grueling death march where I had to average between 2,000 and 2,500 words for each actual writing day to even stand a chance to catch up later. Not very fun.
Still, the above is mostly me crashing from the relief of it being freaking done, because all in all the experience was very positive, and good lessons were learned. Writing one particular scene moved me to tears, something that had not happened to me in a bit under a decade[2].
Since I had a setting and a good backstory but no proper plot, I went for a series of thematically relevant vignettes, which turned out to be a great idea: soon plot fragments emerged on their own. With a good external focus help, like a nicely rhythmic electroethnic CD[3] going a loop in the headphones, I managed to 'trance out' into writing mode a few times, where it even became easy for the course of a few hundred words.
Then there was the impromptu trip, and I went for a brief flashback to keep myself busy until I was back, but I returned so tired and anxious about my lateness and so afraid I wasn't going to get back into the writing groove, that I ended up stretching the 'brief flashback' for over 20,000 words, not far from half of the whole work, which sort of derailed the rest of the writing. This bothers me, because I had the building blocks of, I think, a pretty good story in there, and in the end I didn't stop very far from the beginning. Main character didn't even get to discover the power in her that is central to the theme!
Next time: manage to be less tired, and don't be so afraid to cut scenes shorter. Tiredness kills the writing spirit.
And also learn to aim low. My urge to go for tales of epic proportions is just not reasonable in the context of NaNoWriMo.
It also turns out that when I need to stretch things beyond all reason I can be a complete bastard to my characters, to the point of making George R. R. Martin look like a kindly old gentleman. (Which he is, I doubt not. Just not to his characters.)
So, what now? I'll sleep, I think. Perhaps, if I have the courage, I'll keep writing this. Just not now. I'm a bit burnt out.
But god dammit, I did it.
[1] Last year, mostly, I was trying to see if I could make myself sit at the table long enough to write 50,000 words worth of content. That a story emerged was a pure accident.
[2] Arguably, the exhaustion helped. It was easily 2am by then. That will make anyone a bit mushy.
[3] Lost Eden, by Stéphane Picq. Still my favorite writing music after a decade. Yes, those are the musics of the video game of the same name.
Nov. 24th, 2009
11:49 pm - Torchwood.
I don't usually follow Torchwood, but this evening I came across the Children Of Earth arc, all five episodes played in a row.
... Dude. So that's what happens when the Doctor is not there. I'm traumatized.
Quite coincidentally, I'm now off to kill off a main character. The never-ending joys of November.
Nov. 5th, 2009
09:21 pm - Still alive.
Already doing much better! (Which in itself suffices to prove that, half-assed symptoms and all, it was not Das Flü. It would have gotten a lot worse before it got better, had it been Das Flü.)
So now I no longer have an excuse not to attempt NaNoWriMo. Damn.
How I hate thee, performance anxiety.
Nov. 2nd, 2009
05:58 pm
Normally there should be some November-related angst here, because flailing helplessly is my thing in a way productive activities aren't, but it's not good for much beside the odd LJ post material.
Instead I'm posting to say I'm coughy and feverish and my joints ache. I've caught symptoms! Whatever shall I do.
What I won't do is flail, because, hurt. (I've got the helplessness thing down pat, though.)
Oct. 24th, 2009
11:51 am - English.
A thought: when someone intends to 'gut you', they're planning on removing guts from your body. Whereas someone planning to 'bone you' would put an additional bone in your person, as it were.
I'll never fathom English.
Oct. 9th, 2009
07:21 pm - Of the Winds of Life and the Vagaries Thereof.
And that's it. As of right now, I am no longer employed at that company.
It feels weird. This is the longest I've worked anywhere. I don't regret anything; there were so many clear signs that it was time to leave. The company no longer exists as such, to start with; bought off, gutted, renamed, reassembled into an odd entity which we're not sure what to make of. So we held a funeral party for the company yesterday evening anyway.
Still. The coworkers I leave behind are good people, and I'll miss them. I feel almost guilty over the faint whiffs of "Oh my God, how are we going to do without him" I got today. I used to spend a lot of my time helping out coworkers with the trickiest stuff. But hey, I feel I made a difference, and that's what I was in for.
And now, to rest.
Oct. 5th, 2009
08:48 pm - Oh boy.
So it's no news now: I'm quitting my company. This week's my last.
Why am I quitting? Let us just say: I'm not too confident in its future. Too much disconnect between its ambitions and its actual capabilities.
Case in point: they just made the news.
A super-hyper-high visibility website went up today. We're talking something really big, here.
And it went down in flames right away. With, it seems, all the country's cameras turned on it.
Today was a day off for me so this doesn't affect me personally, but let's have a thought for my coworkers. Must not have been a good day for them.
But I can't stop laughing. Oh boy.
Aug. 5th, 2009
08:11 pm - The Summer of Utter Joy.
So in other news, it looks like the registrations for EuroFurence are definitively closed.
Which in turns means I won't be going.
It's not that I didn't want to. I just wasn't home when the registration opened back in January, and so ended up on the waiting list. Not far into the waiting list, no further than last year, actually, but on the waiting list still.
Fast forward to now, still on waiting list, except there's no waiting list anymore. Apparently things are being somewhat insane this year in terms of attendance.
Can't say I'm not mildly bitter. There's a good number of people I only ever get to hang out with while at EF, in addition to all the good it generally does to my mental health.
So far this has not been the awesomest summer in my life.
But hey, at least the health is good and both my girl and kid are doing well, so it could be worse.
Aug. 3rd, 2009
11:29 pm
Right.
Such was the plan: C.'s on night duty this night, and that meant I had to go pick up the kid at Nanny's, and then feed, change, bathe and bed him. All on my own.
... I managed.
He's sound asleep and happy as a clam, as fed and clean as a baby is ever going to get.
I feel a little less male now, but a lot more relieved.
12:30 pm
This morning, for the first time in his life, I dropped the kid off at his new nanny's place before going to work.
... Nannies so totally need a Web site with real time updates. c_c
Jul. 20th, 2009
10:46 pm - Word of the day is 'mrah'.
So, it's back to work with me; which involves only moderate amounts of cheerful and entirely too much TIRED.
Sat at my desk blearily, purged two weeks worth of email. (That's somewhere upwards of 2,000 of the little textual buggers. I've become very good at turbo-skimming.)
And learned this morning that there was an important meeting this evening -- down in Paris. Thus did Circumstances preemptively foil my clever plan to be home early so I could welcome C. back from her first post-birth work day. This is why the wise man never underestimates Circumstances.
Not home before half past nine. Glee.
Nevertheless, attending the meeting was worth it, due to the import of the information given there:
The company, as such, will stop existing in its current form within two months.
Dude.
I don't necessarily mind the way things are headed, mind you: change does not have to be a bad thing. Just, that's a bit much to return to work to.
Mrah, I tell you. Mrah.
Jul. 8th, 2009
08:57 pm
So, away from home for two weeks. As usual, vacations are spent in entirely too many places, doing entirely too many things, and while I usually dig that kind of craziness, this time, just this time, I could really have used some real, actual rest.
Still loving you guys, but don't you dare post too much. When I get home, I want to sleep. :)
Jun. 3rd, 2009
09:22 pm - Dude...
The CFO of our parent company was in flight 447.
I didn't know him personally, but the transition from the kind of horror that is comfortably dulled by the TV's screen, to something that I have a direct link to, is too uncomfortable for words.
My sole hope is that there was an explosive decompression of the cabin that knocked everybody out right away so they didn't have to watch themselves go.
May. 28th, 2009
06:00 pm - On the proposition 8 Supreme Court of California ruling.
I have been remiss in updating this blog. There were those entries in my head, with such exciting titles as The Saddest Pizza In The World (A True Story), or The Great Garden Battle Of 2009, and I entirely failed to commit them to actual words on account of a complicated mix of 'augh, what if my writing sucks?' and 'surely tomorrow I'll feel like posting'.
Straddling the line between insecurity and procrastination. Story of my life!
But this is important, so let me post right away.
The ruling of the Supreme Court of California re. proposition 8 has caused much sorrow: at first glance, it seems to uphold the ban on gay marriage.
At first glance.
And yet.
Quoting page 36 of the ruling (emphasis mine):
"... Same-sex couples, as well as opposite-sex couples, enjoy the constitutional right, under the privacy and due process clauses of the California Constitution, to establish an officially recognized family relationship. [...] Proposition 8 reasonably must be interpreted in a limited fashion as eliminating only the right of same-sex couples to equal access to the designation of marriage, and as not otherwise affecting the constitutional right of those couples to establish an officially recognized family relationship."
Or, to sum up: same-sex couples have exactly the same constitutional rights as opposite-sex couples, EXCEPT to have their relationship designated with the word 'marriage'.
Under the guise of upholding it, in effect the Supreme Court has eviscerated proposition 8.
Leaving us with only the much lighter concern of finding a new word for marriage. Any ideas? I suppose it can be anything, 'mareej', even 'mariage' -- just NOT, absolutely NOT 'marriage'.
I wonder if 'ǝbɐıɹɹɐɯ' would be allowable. :)
(From Daily Kos, via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
chris_sawyer.)
May. 5th, 2009
10:01 pm - The Science of Cataclysms.
In non-baby-related news, Slashdot relayed this article, which at first glance you might be tempted to overlook as yet another boring viewpoint on Finance and The Crisis and Stuff.
Don't.
This is a personal account by the man who found himself writing the software which the financial industry has been using to automatically consolidate debts into bonds. First, prime mortgages; then subprimes; then subprime-backed bonds and then the bonds backed on those bonds.
It's like watching a frame-by-frame replay of the world's most interesting train wreck.
I am having a hard time describing my feelings after reading this. There is a pure, cold and perhaps a little morbid mathematical beauty to this, that mortiferous and perfectly logical chain of causes to consequences -- all happening beyond the understanding of anyone involved, because the entire purpose of the system was to encapsulate entire worlds of arithmetical complexity to the point where the sole human-facing interface could be narrowed into a commoditized dashboard sporting but a few variables.
A few months ago, I was sent to attend a conference organized by Oracle on the topic of Business Intelligence -- the core business of the group that owns the company I work for -- which roughly amounts to spectacularly expensive software that purports to model your entire business, and lets different people supervise and control what aspects thereof fall under their responsibility on the basis of convenient, bite-sized atoms of data. It left me with a similar feeling, something uncomfortable, precariously balanced between the fascination for the mathematical beauty of the engineering involved, and sheer terror at the stark disconnect between those people's now fulfilled craving for artificial understandability and the organic complexities of the real world their actual businesses -- and we're talking Fortune 500 here -- exist in.
I asked someone a question to that effect. "How does this system account for mismatches between the models and reality?"
There was this awkward shifting -- the embarrassment of the high-born as a dirt-soled peasant asks the council of princes about beet and pigs -- and a reply which, as I remember it, went something like: "Well, that's not really the purpose of BI, is it?"
Probably not, I guess.
Perhaps all understanding is an illusion, in the end, leaving us, ironically, with the cold beauty of mathematical logic as our lone solace. Bitchin'.
May. 2nd, 2009
09:07 pm - Gah.
In these here columns, I intended to make a post about tech-related stuff, because it's been a while and I was in a mood to anthropomorphize electronic components anyway.
Instead I must shed the recent horror right away by committing it to public words before it encysts in the back of my consciousness and leaves me forever traumatized:
HE PUKED ALL OVER ME.
Gah.
The horror. You think it the sort of thing that only happens to others, like venereal diseases or baldness. And then... Everything goes so fast. You're holding your son in your arms, crooning soothingly to him so he falls asleep, and bam. By the time the sudden white-ish protrusion from the kid's mouth registers on you, your sleeve already feels warm and soggy.
But that, my friends, is but the beginning.
Like the small tremors that are followed by the big earthquake, it gets better. And there you are, assessing damage from what you think is the last one, but then another comes, and somehow, somehow, it's bigger still.
And there's this very slightly sick smell like warm curdled milk...
At least I guess I can be proud of my son's capacity. Dude.
Thank heavens for C., who materialized right away when I started bawling, and took charge, ever unflappable. (Sometimes I suspect she truly loves everything about her baby. I'm not gonna inquire.)
I'll tolerate babies when they bear half my genome, but baby puke remains right out. c_c
Well, bah. Something like this had to happen sooner or later, you know?
Then C. cleaned up and we sat for dinner. C. suggested we have ice cream for dessert, to make me feel better.
I said: "Maybe not dairy, love."
Apr. 9th, 2009
10:10 am - Signs That I May Be Spending Too Much Time At Work...
... and/or not enough time in bed:
Yesterday evening, I was sprawled on the couch with C., blearily switching channels on the TV, and as it came to me that the switching was really fast and smooth and pleasantly devoid of lag, something clicked inside my mind and the following thought popped up:
"Gee, this sure is working so much better since I cleaned up the database."
... Yeah. Maybe I'm going to set database optimization aside for a few days.
In other, baby-related news, he's being a remarkable pain in various areas, first and foremost the butt and the ears, but then cunningly keeps me from developing lasting resentment and an urge to legally change his name to Gulliver Barnaby the Sexless, Third of the Name: the little bastard looks me in the eye and SMILES TO ME.
Of course, he doesn't do that to his mother. Doesn't need to, see: she's genetically conditioned to be his tireless personal servant day in, day out, a fact which he's been mirthfully abusing from about day one.
Also, I've been having the writing bug for days on end now, but can't seem to make anything worthwhile of it beyond unfinished fragments of stuff. Story of my life.
Mar. 25th, 2009
12:22 am - Moments in Time.
It's a small bookshop, hiding in a small street of a small town. It smells of the good kind of old, the warmth of waxed wood.
The bookseller, humbly nondescript little man, his thinning hair already more snow than ash, sits there in his tiny, universes-spanning kingdom of ink and paper, quietly watching the world go by.
He's the sort of man whom you could ask whether he owns, hidden somewhere in a corner of his shop, a copy of The Neverending Story bound in copper-colored silk, and he'd smile, and know exactly why you're asking, and why it matters.
It's a small town under sun and rain, but some live, ever, under the rain.
They're a small band of youth, perhaps in their late teens, loitering outside, outside of home, outside of school, outside of life, waiting out days that stretch into no better tomorrows.
Perhaps there is something, a hierarchy of despair that's the ruler of them, where you can only climb up a step by causing someone else grief.
Perhaps it's their way of asserting what little control they believe they have on the world around them.
Perhaps it's only because the old bookseller is alone, and it's so easy.
There they are, and they enter the bookshop.
One of them advances on the bookseller, waves his arms frantically, shouting, "Mad cow disease! Mad cow disease!"
Perhaps the bookseller, in his surprise, doesn't have time to be afraid; but the diversion works all the same, and already the band is running off, taking with them what books they could snatch in a hurry.
The old man rushes to his doorstep, but it's too late: the thieves are young and they run fast, and he can only watch them disappear at the corner of the street.
But no: there is still something for him to do.
The old bookseller takes a deep breath, puts his hands around his mouth, and calls after the scoundrels, as loud as he can:
"Read them! Read them!"
Mar. 20th, 2009
09:11 pm - And, back to work.
Today was my first day at work after my parental leave.
I feel all grown up now. Daddy going to work to feed wife and kid. Right!
It turns out it was a good day to resume working, because:
1) It was a very quiet day, all in all, so I could catch up with stuff;
2) Today our bosses had a sumptuous buffet organized, on account that we hadn't had one this year yet. The salmon was divine!
It also turns out that the detailed explanations I wrote some time before leaving regarding some vastly suboptimal behavior of a particular project were read thoroughly and, when the project started crashing repeatedly, understood and put in practice. And that the stability of the project in question improved drastically right away.
I am not exactly used to have my self-confidence petted by stuff at work, so, uh, yeah. This is a good thing, especially as I've been scheming rather persistently to have the higher-ups realize that, yes, I do know what I'm doing pretty darn well, and it might be, ah, profitable for everybody involved if I could have a hand in technical decisions before they turn into technical calamities.
And it also turns out I got a raise. The kind of raise that puts the 'token' in 'token amount', mind you, but as this comes after they'd proclaimed there would be no raise whatsoever, on account of Terrible Financial Crisis Oh My God, I like to believe the message I sent during my annual review was well received. Can't be sure without asking others about their raises, but if it should turn out the "no raises, guys" thing was really not all humbuggery after all, doing so would be kind of crass. And crass is not my thing[*].
[*] For what my thing is, is bad temper. Gotta know yourself, y'know.
Mar. 14th, 2009
06:50 pm - Okay, so...
I am, right now, working on a program's code... with a baby strapped to my belly in his baby carrier.
The wonders of this new life never end.
Next step: beat kefen at Mario Kart with the baby carrier strapped on.
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