I didn’t write much last week mostly because I’d been working longer and more hectic days than usual. I started at my current job mid-September. I took the job because it would allow me to learn a few new programming languages (or scripting languages as I like to call them) and give me experience in an area I hadn’t previously explored. Well, I also took it because it would pay our rent, but that’s another matter altogether. The guy who hired me promised to teach me all he knew. A little over two months after he hired me, he quit the firm. Leaving me, my position, and my project in a quandary.
I ended up taking on the project on my own and finishing the design work. I made some changes to our plans and decided to tackle a small portion of the new system first as a test to see if the overall strategy was going to work and to find out any unknown problems with our approach. I spent the last six weeks, cleaning data, writing over 50 scripts and testing like crazy. I thought and rethought our original ideas and cut out all the whistles and bells from the new system, at least for the first rollout. I tried to remember the wise lessons taught in the Mythical Man Month which I hadn’t read since Sophomore Year, college. I had full control over the system and I knew that meant I was also the sole person responsible of its potential downfall.
Well, after much hard work, I rolled out the new system last weekend and six of the eight people in the office are using it. (The other two are part of the second phase of the rollout, a much bigger and more involved section which I will start working on this week.) I haven’t rolled out a professional system completely on my own ever before. At school, I had classmates in my group, on Wall Street, I was either a member of or managing a team anywhere from three to 20 people. I’ve coded for myself, for Jake and his family or friends before, but I’ve never designed, coded, tested and rolled out a full system completely on my own before. And I was expecting glitches. Major glitches. I spent several sleepless nights worrying that once I rolled this system out, it would burn and crash causing the rest of my project to get cancelled and me to get fired.
Well, Monday came and went. A tiny glitch in one of the sections that’s used only by one user appeared. The other five asked for enhancements not originally planned. (Some were extremely easy and thus coded, others are on my list for after the phase-two rollout.) Tuesday passed. So did Wednesday and Thursday. I went back to working out of my house (I’d decided to work in the office for the first three days just in case disaster struck or the users were confused about how to use the system). As of now, an entire week has passed with all of the users on my system. We haven’t had any glitches besides the one on Monday. The users have been quiet. In the world of software development, quiet users mean happy users. If they are calling you, it is always to complain. I even received some compliments. “It looks so beautiful.” “I can work much faster now” “That’s so awesome.” Magic to my ears.
Even if my users don’t, I know that the new system could use a lot more work. I can give you a long list of its flaws. Nonetheless, my users are happy. I had no glitches. I didn’t have to uninstall it. I didn’t bring down any servers. They didn’t lose any clients because of me. It all seems too good to be true.
It appears, much to my dismay, that I am a better programmer than I was a teacher.
Warning: If you haven’t seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yet and plan to see it, you may not want to read my thoughts on the movie until after you’ve seen it.
Jake and went to see Charlie Kaufman’s new movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Since I have seen several of Kaufman’s movies and have enjoyed all of them on some level and I’ve also been a longtime fan of Jim Carrey I knew I was likely to enjoy this movie. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much it touched me.
Before I went to see it, I already knew the pretext of the movie but I was slightly misguided. All the text I read said that the movie was about two people who were in love and then break up and the woman has the man erased from her memories and he starts to do the same but changes his mind knowing he could have another chance with her since she doesn’t remember him anymore. I think that could also have made a good movie but this movie was slightly, albeit significantly, different. While it’s true that Carey doesn’t want them to erase his memories, they do get erased. All of them. And at the end, both characters are starting over. Neither of them have the memories of the relationship.
Besides the beautiful imagery and the touching romance, the most interesting part of the movie is the very end. When both characters find out how they end up after having just re-met (even though, they think they met for the first time) they have a decision to make. “Do you go into a relationship even if you know how badly it ends?” Do you go into it knowing it will end? Knowing you will say mean, hurtful things about each other down the line? Do you do it even when you have evidence it won’t last?
I’ve written about changing the past and about selective memory so it shouldn’t surprise you that the questions above might fascinate me. I’ve also been in relationships that didn’t end so beautifully or ones where there was too much pain. People have often assumed that I would have preferred never to have gotten into those relationships. People have even told me I had made a mistake. Knowing the ending, the pain, the anger, the sorrow, would I have chosen not to date the person at all? You might be shocked to know the answer isn’t an easy, “No.” I can’t say that it’s a decided “Yes” either. Despite the ending and the terrible moments, there also were euphoric moments. There was kindness, joy, laughter, and love. There was learning and growing. Even if I may know how the relationship ended, I wouldn’t know what kind of person I would be had I chosen a different path. And I guess I always opt to take the known over the unknown. At least this way, I can come up with a plan.
I also think that besides forgetting unpleasant moments in our lives, we have a lot of faith in our ability to not make them reoccur. We fool ourselves into thinking we can change people. We can change situations. We can break habits. Given the chance to do it over again, we can make it work. The ending made me wonder whether they chose to be together despite the fact that they knew it wouldn’t work or because they decided it would be different this time around (more of the former, I think). It’s amazing how many of us make the same mistakes over and over again.
What if I knew my marriage would end badly? What if I knew all the terrible fights to come? Would I choose to never get married? Would I get out of the relationship now? What if I had forty years of bliss and wonderful memories with my husband and then two years of terrible fights in the end? What’s the point at which it’s best to have never gotten involved? How many bad memories does it take to make the good ones worth erasing?
I guess I don’t have the answers, just more questions. Maybe that’s why we don’t know the future and why we don’t get the choice.
Last weekend we reached 85degrees here in San Diego so everyone took the opportunity to shed their clothing and go to the beach. Jake and I were busy but we took a lunch break at La Jolla Shores beach which has the worst parking in any of the beaches I’ve been to in San Diego.
I took this shot very quickly which is why I think it’s a bit out of focus. But I still liked the fact that the kid is sitting on the other kid’s lap and thought it was too fun not to post. The kid on the bottom doesn’t appear to be complaining either.
I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking about photography and wondering whether I should post bigger pictures on the main page. I wanted to push myself to take more pictures and to get more feedback on them so I can learn to be a better photographer. I also wanted to update my site even on days when I don’t have much to say or I am too busy to post a long entry. So I’ve decided to make the pictures bigger and to post the “story” of the picture, if and when there is one as a comment next to the picture. This way regular visitors can see something new almost daily, and read something new as often as I have something interesting to say. And also, pictures get their own comments so we can differentiate between them and the thoughts.
As always feel free to let me know what you think.
Ever since the Iowa caucuses and the outcomes of the next ten days of primaries, I’ve been wondering why the system of voting for the primaries is the way it is. I know there’s been a trend of many other states moving their dates forward, trying to be one of the ‘influential’ states and there are states that complain about not getting enough attention.
My questions is: Why do any of the states get to vote before others? How come we don’t all vote on the same day across all states like we do for the Presidential election. I’m not bothered that states like Iowa and New Hampshire get so much political attention. I am much more upset about how strongly they affect the race itself. There were nine presidential candidates before the Iowa caucuses. On the day Jake got to vote in California, we were down to four. I feel that no one or two or seven states should have enough power to change the entire race before the other 43 have even had a chance to participate.
If all states voted on the same day, I am confident the results could have been different. Maybe we wouldn’t even have Kerry as the candidate. Dean would have never made that speech (or at least it would have been too late to have an effect), Clark would have been an option. I feel that if the primaries were treated like a serious, country-wide election, they should be all on the same day and shouldn’t have as much local concentration as they do. The election is not about a candidate who is serving Iowa or Alaska or Alabama. This is a presidential candidate. This person will serve the entire country. This person needs to concentrate on the whole country and the whole country should get the option of voting for the candidate they want in the White House.
It isn’t fair that the early states got to choose between nine and others didn’t. In my eyes, this affects the entire balance of the election. What about all those people who voted for Kerry or Lieberman, would they have voted for someone else if the two weren’t a choice. Of course, they would have. Would the results have been different? Maybe or maybe not.
The fact is, we will never know.
Jake and I spent yesterday in Los Angeles. I am planning to work all weekend, next weekend, so we thought it might be nice to get away at least for a day since I’ll be working for twelve days straight once this weekend is over. We’d visited LA three weeks ago to take photographs and the ride home was so painful that we didn’t want to drive up there again for a while.
This time, we set up brunch and coffee meetings with two of Jake’s friends. One from his high-school years whom he hadn’t seen in nine years and another from college, whom we hadn’t seen or talked to in over four years. We figured between the two get togethers, I’d spend a few hours practicing with my new camera. Since our last experience had taught us that we could spend forever in LA traffic, we decided to pick one spot and spend the few hours there. I read about several different places and settled on Olvera Street which sounded interesting, fun, and full of potential for photography.
We got on the road at 9:00am and made it to Santa Monica in exactly one hour and forty minutes. It was my second time down the boulevard, but Jake’s first so we strolled a bit while I tried to take some pictures. We then met his friend and his friend’s girlfriend for brunch, had great conversation. Charged up and excited, we then strolled down to the beach for some more pictures. I’m not really a lie-on-the-beach type of person but there’s something about the Pacific Coast beaches that I find magical. Maybe it’s how expansive and never-ending they feel. On Friday Jake and I had gone to La Jolla for me to pickup some paperwork from work and spent lunch by the beach and I told him that we should visit a beach at least three times a week. The Santa Monica beach was louder but it still gave me the sense of serenity I enjoy.
We left the beach for the loud and joyful crowd of Olvera street where we spent an hour walking and taking pictures, eating Mexican food, and enjoying the 70-degree weather. Just as we got in the car to drive towards Hollywood, Jake’s friend called to let us know she was finished with her commitment so we met her at the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard where, of course, I took pictures. We spent the next two hours catching up, laughing, and talking about our careers, lives, marriage, and mutual friends. The way back was as painless as the way up and we made it home in less than two hours. All in all, a truly enjoyable day.
There’s something special about catching up with old friends. No matter how long it’s been since you last saw them, there’s a sense of familiarity that never goes away and allows you to fill years of gaps in a matter of minutes. It leaves you so fulfilled and full of hope and you remember all the things you liked about that person all along and rebuild your faith that this time you won’t fall out of touch.
It was one of those inspiring days.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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