I have a choice to make, and I pretty much have to make it tomorrow. I’m not terribly happy about it, either.

See, I had a bright idea almost two years ago. I implemented it, and saved my office a whole lot of money. I now have another potentially-bright idea, of a much grander scale.

My choice: sign a contract—which will preclude any possibility of my other idea ever seeing light—and see a fair bit of compensation for what I’ve done (beyond my hourly wage, which has of course already been paid)… or give that (and my job) up for the chance to strike out on my own and pursue this other idea.*

[*Of course, there’s also the find-another-job option.]

Staying on will give me no additional skills that would be of interest to any future employer, and—though it’ll give me employment in the short-term—will not guarantee me a position in the long-term.

My other idea is exciting and interesting to me, but it’s comparatively huge—and therefore has a significant chance of failure. I can’t even begin to narrow down how significant that chance is. I also can’t judge when it would actually bring money in (if ever). If I were to fail, the skills I’d gain may or may not be of value to others—mostly depending on how successful I was in my failure.

…

I’m looking at taking a huge risk, and it’s pretty much scaring me spitless. Either decision could end up being a gigantic mistake (though, granted, I might not ever know it). My nature—being fundamentally risk-adverse and not liking change—isn’t really helping things.

But I keep summarizing my choices, in my head, as being between shackles and freedom. (Though perhaps those should be “money” and “stupidity”…)

I stand with GreyDuck, inasmuch as I have voted. Actually, I stand apart from him: I’ve already turned my ballot in.

Now if only people would stop calling my cell phone with those fscking taped messages.

Incidentally, to those people who keep running ads: I don’t care if a certain measure was funded by outside interests, or one guy* (optionally with deep pockets), or a pack of nuns. If the measure makes sense to me, I’ll vote for it; if it doesn’t, I won’t. Simple, really.

[*I make an exception for Bill Sizemore’s measures. Most of Oregon seems to, as well.]

Also, I appreciate TV advertisements that don’t somehow contain gigantic logical holes within their thirty-second confines. Thinking about this measure cured my ol’ gout, so you should vote for it! Riiight.

And if you’re going to start slinging mud, make sure everybody gets in on it. Darlene Hooley and Mike Erickson are a beacon to us all, in this regard: I’m pretty sure one of them is a devil-worshipping baby-eater, but I can’t remember which one it is.

…

Can it be Wednesday already?

Well, the midterm election is less than a week away. I don’t really have much stake in this one—being sick of both major parties will do that to you—but I’m still on edge about it. The reason? voter fraud. Not old-school thousands of dead people vote fraud (though I of course have a problem with that, too), but newfangled technology-enabled fraud—some of it potentially undetectable. Ever.

There have already been issues. I mean, I know how to hack a Diebold electronic voting machine; I know how to vote multiple times on a Diebold optical voting machine; I know how to vote as many times as I want on any Sequoia electronic voting machine.

I don’t even live in a state where I could use that knowledge. [Even if I did, one vote is plenty for me.] But people are going to be voting on those machines in less than a week. Holy shit.

…

I may not agree with half the country on any specific issue, but I hope to heck that I agree with damn near everyone that this is unacceptable. Diebold and co. deserve to be dragged out in the street and shot.

Profanity Index update: A reduction in my swearing follows an increase in my distaste for cussing by a few months, it seems. I now pretty much only swear when I consciously choose to; in lieu of most everything I’d say, I now say [oh] snap! My lone exception to that general rule—at least, that I’ve noticed—is the phrase holy smokes!

Dancing: I’m usually a lazy dancer when I do dance, in that I tend to dance with people I’ve danced with before. Consequently, I’m still amazed—when I dance with a stranger (especially if they’re a good follow), as has been happening more often lately—at how well two people who don’t know a thing about each other can dance together.

Beanery: Last week, during our regular conversation…

Amanda: I live in an older house that’s kind of falling apart.

Brian (not missing a beat): is it like that house in Fight Club?

[lengthy pause]

Brent: HAHAHAHAHAHA

This week, Amanda warned us that she might be throwing a party for her upcoming birthday, and that if she did we would be invited. I can’t imagine we’d miss it, if it actually happens.

Blogorrhea: It happens. I have(/had?) all kinds of stuff that I’ve been meaning to blog about… I just didn’t have the energy to do it.

While walking to Brian’s car this evening, we passed by a group of people standing around and chatting in front of my apartments. One girl decided, apparently on a (drunken?) lark, to walk along the sidewalk (we were walking in the street) and say “hey guys!” to us every time she saw us between parked cars. We laughed and kept walking.

On the way back, we slipped into the garage to avoid letting in unauthorized folk who were hanging around the front door (my concession towards the draconian rules given to me by the apartment managers). The garage (located underneath the building proper) happens to have grate-covered “windows” to allow light in, so we decided to walk around and see if hey guys-girl was still around. I bet Brian that she was probably drunk enough to have forgotten about us.

I bet wrong.

Hey guys-girl was still there, and—upon discovering our renewed presence—delighted in periodically saying her catch-phrase. We (actually, Brian) began returning the favor by saying hey girl! in response, often accompanied by waving.

During this time, an SUV containing a guy and two cat-girls (Halloween, natch) arrived and parked next to us. One of the cat-girls quickly caught onto the game, and “hey guys!”-ed us as well.

…

I need to hang out outside my apartments more.

Last week the new apartment managers posted a notice on each apartment’s door. Under threat of with-cause eviction, we were informed that we should not:

– prop open any doors

– allow visitors to follow us through any keyfob-secured doors

– litter

– have a party, or participate in a party, that disturbs the peace

While I understand (and appreciate!) the desire to keep the apartments safe, clean, and quiet, the whole idea of not holding a door open for people is pretty much counter to basic human decency.

The notice then started waxing eloquent:

Let us remind each of you, there are security cameras in every hallway and underground parking lot that run 24/7, if we are able to identify tenants committing any of the above acts we will issue these tapes to the police and fully persecute within the limits of the law.

I’m a big fan of persecution within legal limits.

[The management group] and the property owner wish to provide each and every tenant the safest possible place to live within our power, if evicting tenants from the premises that do not wish to follow these simple rules is what we have to do, this we will proceed.

Run-on sentences rule. I also appreciate how the last sentence tries to get poetic while still shedding the restrictive bonds of grammar.

I’m surrounded by huge messes. Things to recycle litter my kitchen; my desk is crammed full of things that need to find a new home; I routinely walk on a pile of cardboard that I’m too tired to drag down to be recycled. Even my computer is a bloody nightmare: I have more files on my desktop (all of which require some sort of attention) than I care to think about—and I have more files on my laptop that need to be reintegrated with my desktop. My refrigerator is practically empty, as is my cupboard.

I’ve been too exhausted to do anything about these things, no matter how early I go to bed nor how late I wake up. (I must really be short sleep.)

My folks were in Hawaii last week (yes, the earthquake made it a different sort of vacation for them), so I had dog- and house-sitting duties. Juggling Yoshi with waiting for various deliveries, the monthly office meeting, and whatnot wound up being a rather big struggle, and left me physically drained. The first ballroom dance of the academic year was held during that week—and while I attended, I spent more time trying to stay awake than actually dancing. Sacrilege!

[One of the few bright spots of the last week has been the result of one of those deliveries I waited for: I now have a kitchen table. It’s a revolution in dining technology!]

Work was fun this last week as well, as I heard about the latest soul-destroying machinations that have occurred behind-the-scenes. This week is the next round of debate-the-value-of-my-work with my boss, which has added another dab of stress on top of the fact that my life is in shambles.

…

Sometimes I honestly believe that things would have been better if I never built my program and my office was allowed to continue on its trajectory towards destruction. Certain higher-ups would then have had to face their failings (or, at least, the fact that they did fail) head-on, for once.

I think those thoughts, and then I realize that I’m pretty much talking about burning the world to purify it. As in, bad-guy logic.

I don’t know about you, but I spend more time than I care to junking spam from my inbox. Almost all of mine, these days, has been of the form of random text with a GIF attachment selling the latest stock scam. (The rest, as you might suspect, have been offering to improve my sexual performance.)

I’d actually bookmarked a Hawk Wings post on how to filter image-based spam a few months ago: key in on the “Content-Type: multipart/related” header, and add additional rules to week out false positives. Only today was I bothered enough to put it into effect (incidentally, I use Thunderbird—this isn’t a Mac-only, Mail.app-only, technique); initial results indicate that it’s working like a charm. I’m actually looking forward to checking my email, now.

Nota bene: this doesn’t actually mean that I’m any better about replying to email than usual. I’m still terrible about that.

(Yes, I’m alive. Exhausted, though. More—hopefully—later.)

Started the weekend off by nearly getting my car towed, courtesy of a guy parking in my spot, forcing me into someone else’s spot—where that someone else called the tow truck on me, while I did not for the truck in my spot. After going to talk to the new apartment manager (I’m happy to report that things appear to be settling down and working out decently), the truck in my spot got towed. Without a warning. (I’m still not sure quite how that all adds up.) It was an annoying thing, still; I spent a good bit of time scraping FINAL NOTICE sticker residue off of my driver side window.

I hate parking issues. I also hate having people towed—but not quite as much as I’d hate being towed myself.

…

I entered the actual weekend exhausted. I had been invited up to Nick and Lindsey’s housewarming party on Saturday evening, though, and that’s the sort of thing you can’t really beg off of without a really good reason. I certainly had a good time through it all (from eating Japanese with Brian on the way up, through the party, all the way to playing Mahjong at Andy’s early this evening)… but I think I’m going to pay for this in short order.

Upon returning to my apartment, I half anticipated the spiders to have taken over everything. This is crazy for at least two reasons: there really haven’t been many spiders around (regardless of the size of one notable spider that appeared), and I was only gone for a little over a day.

For whatever reason, I feel like I’ve been gone for a month. I think this is the tired talking in the place of my brain.