Category: Internships

The Badass Makeover Returns

August 18, 2003 /

I learned something today. I learned that you can be an extremely nice, friendly Turkish guy at my job named Sevket (SHEV-ket), with almost girlishly pretty eyes and lips, a teddy-bear figure and a very normal haircut. Then, you can go on vacation for a week, get a tan, shave your head and grow a goatee, and turn into Kaiser fucking Soze.

Man, I wish I had a camera. He’s still nice, there’s just all this terror overlaid on it now. I was coming back from the break room with a bag of Doritos, and Sevket passed me and said “Hey, Brendan. Early lunch? Late breakfast?” Then he smiled, and I had to make a conscious effort not to dive for the nearest cube and pray for it to be over.

In which I worry and ramble

August 13, 2003 /

My boss just officially pitched me the do-you-want-to-keep-working-during-school question, and I’m torn. Working in a cube isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot more comfortable whatever retail or counter job I’d otherwise have this fall. Plus it looks a lot better to have months of programming experience already on your resume, even if it’s just as a part-timer.

On the other hand, I don’t like this job. The people are great and the environment is comfortable, but the work is boring, boring, boring and I’m only even halfway talented at it. At least if I (hypothetically) work at a bookstore I’ll be busy and competent, even if I’ll also be on my feet all day.

I just want to DO stuff. I want to be minting clean lean extreme code, not patching bugs in this enormous ugly proprietary system. It makes me tired and I look for distractions, and with broadband right here at my workstation, that’s not good for my productivity. That in turn makes me feel guilty about my work ethic, which makes me more stressed, which makes me tired, lather and rinse and so forth.

I know that I’ll probably start out bug-fixing wherever I go, so I should probably get used to it. The other thing, though, is that I have no idea what my workload is going to be like in grad school; my boss would clearly prefer that I keep my job uninterrupted, just dropping down to part-time, but by the time I get to midterms that could very well kill me. I don’t like taking twelve hours out of my day now, and I don’t want to find out what it’d be like to do that with homework. Also, I’m REALLY tired of getting up at 0630. I want an evening shift.

(It occurs to me that I’m posting this from work, and there exists the possibility of a random IT guy picking it up on a sniffer and sending it back to my boss with a cocked eyebrow. Just in case: Hello, IT guy! Your sister was great!)

Forty-five google minutes later, I’ve got a list of ten book or comic stores I could bus to. I think I’m going to make a bunch of phone calls tonight. At least thinking about this got me to dust off my bum and actually start thinking about what I’ll be doing in the fall. Sometimes questions find answers.

There’s one other thing to consider, too: if I keep up my secret practice project, it shouldn’t be too long until I’m confident about writing publishable short fiction. I know the money’s not great, but it beats all my other options until they spit candy. I also know that chances are slim, and that everybody and her grad school duck tries to write short fiction, but I do have one little in: not everybody or her grad school duck knows Nancy Zafris.

At least I’m in process now, which I think is the important thing. I could live on just my student loans, but I’d rather not, and it’s nice to be able to buy a comic book once in a while. I just need to figure out how and how much I can work. Hey, old people, anybody want to tell me what to do?

August 12, 2003 /

I got about seven hours of sleep last night, and today I feel AMAZING. For the first time in weeks I didn’t fall asleep on the bus in to work, and I have no urge to hide under my desk and nap now. I even want to actually do work more than usual. I honestly can’t remember what it was like to regularly get more than four hours, even on weekends; was it always this good? Man, I must have been spoiled.

I joke about it a lot, but the fact is I’m pretty thoroughly and seriously sleep-deprived, and I’m starting to actually believe it affects my functionality. The problem is that, with travel time added in, I spend almost twelve hours a day preparing for or actually at work. I have one hour in there, during my lunch break, to do anything that doesn’t involve staring at a screen–and of course, when I get home, I do even more of that. I want to do other things, running and drawing and working out and cooking, and I only get from 1800 hrs to whenever I go to bed (ideally, 2200 hrs; realistically, 0200 hrs) for them.

Genuine insomniac Maria will probably blame herself for keeping me up, but it really has little to do with her. It’s been this way all summer, and in fact during most of senior year. Actually, the whole thing probably started junior year; sophomore year was the last time I remember regularly getting eight hours.

Man, this post kind of got away from me. All I meant to do was note that I felt really good after a good night’s sleep. I really am looking forward to school starting, because for the first time in my academic career, I’ll have no classes that start before 1100 hrs.

August 4, 2003 /

No presentation this morning–the CEO had appendicitis this weekend! (And I got a hernia!) He’s fine, though, so it’s just rescheduled for a week later.

I bought a TV yesterday, although I ended up choosing brand reliability over a flat screen and got a Phillips. We still don’t have cable at home, but I do have an XBox and a brand-new high-definition AV pack, and now–no offense, TARC–me and S-Video are best friends.

Speaking of TARC, the same bus I’d been taking from the old apartment actually comes right by the new apartment, which is convenient to the point of suspicion. I have to get up earlier, but I also get to nap on the bus now. Coming soon: sleepy Brendan misses his stop and ends up hitching back from Indiana.

August 2, 2003 /

We spent all of yesterday moving the entire world from Richmond and my old apartment into the new apartment with Maria. My forearms are killing me, and our living room is choked with stuff, but my room actually looks fairly good and my bookshelf is full.

I literally did move everything I own this time; I no longer have any possessions in Richmond, and only a few boxes in storage. There was a big ordeal with getting a moving truck (notice: when U-Haul says “your reservation is confirmed,” what they actually mean is “eat a fuck, shitbrains”), but Ian’s roommate’s family had one that was bigger than what they needed and they were kind enough to help.

So it all worked out eventually, but the process took so long that it was 2030 hrs by the time Mom could head back home. Needless to say, it was also a little late for me to go home and pick up the half-day of work I’d wanted. That’s why I’m in the office alone on a Saturday, putting together my presentation for the CEO ‘n’ company on Monday morning. The fact that I’m in the office is in turn the only reason I can post this, since we have no interweb at home for the moment.

Why isn’t there some source of free crappy broadcast interweb, like there is with TV? Ad-supported. Big networks. Come on, it would be so convenient for people who just moved in.

Also, why not make cell phone rings work like my cell phone’s alarm? It starts off by vibrating, then gradually makes its beeping louder and louder until you wake up. It obviously isn’t hard to do, and that would give you a little notice so you could go for the phone before it just jumped in at the same annoying volume immediately. I hate cell phones. I love my cell phone.

Probably no more activity until Monday at the soonest (although of course I make all my posts from work now anyway).

July 24, 2003 /

Did I say six of seven? Because officially, it turns out to be twelve of twelve. I generated an entire point release myself! I am Bug Barbecue!

Abruptly and without transition, check out Ken’s two–part account of his trip to Lollapalooza. It’s extreme!

“I, Ken Moore, the person you all know as a calm and not easily excited person, was jumping around and loving every second of it. These guy are the saviors of rock and roll.”

It’s great stuff, and I wish I could have been there, and I’m very glad Ken’s writing regularly.

July 21, 2003 /

I’m pretty sure I’m not violating my NDA by writing this: I’m famous! Whoo! Six of the seven changes in our next point release, which comes out Thursday, were bugs that I FIXED!

This is actually not a big deal, since all the issues I’ve done are what Justin calls “five-minute fixes” (except for me they take about a day). Still, code that I’ve written is now part of a commercial software product. I feel like I should have a badge, or at least a button.

Meanwhile, of course, the eleven other issues I’ve worked on didn’t pass muster with Quality Control and have all been assigned back to me. It’s almost like I’m a real programmer. I would demand to get paid more than eight bucks an hour for this, if I actually worked hard enough to earn it.

July 21, 2003 /

Overheard from the cubicle next to me, just now:

“Oh, you know George! I say we kill him.”

Landmark

June 27, 2003 /

Just moments ago, I, Brendan Adkins, closed my first issue! And promptly got busted for blogging at work. I think I’m a real professional now.