07.31.07
Posted in Personal, Pro at 5:44 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: Work Exists to Sap Your Will
Better and more interesting people than I have written about the ridiculous farce of a life that frequently accompanies the “full time” American work week. A typical day goes something like this:
- Get up and shower. (if you wake up on time)
- Drive to work.
- Work all day (or waste time online while trying to look busy)
- Leave work at 5 (if you’re lucky)
- Get home.
- Make dinner.
- Congratulations! It’s now 8 or 9 PM, generally considered to late to do much outdoors.
- Go to bed, or you’ll be too tired to repeat it all tomorrow.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.27.07
Posted in News, Internet at 5:12 pm by Joe Blubaugh
You and I will never be as cool as Poppa Neutrino. The guy built a raft of junk and sailed it across the Atlantic. He’s getting ready to single-hand a junk raft across the Pacific, which is just a mind-boggling achievement. He turned his “tribe” into one of the coolest bands out there - the Flying Neutrinos. The guy is like a wandering prospector dropped into the middle of our time. He works hard, he’s incredibly smart, and he does what he wants whenever he wants to.
You will never sail a raft across an ocean or start a band composed of your children. Ok, you may try the second one, but your children will hate you. This guy is so cool his kids LIKE being in his band!
Permalink
07.24.07
Posted in Personal at 7:05 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Tonight was the intern end-of-term banquet. As happy as I am about it being the end of my term, I backed out of the banquet at the last minute. I know I’ve been a terrible sport this whole summer, sailing instead of hanging out with interns, avoiding intern lunches, and skipping the ’roundtables’ with the bigwigs, but my overall attitude toward the company has infected my interactions with the interns.
My work this summer inspires less interest than my first summer job making hamburgers. It’s just dull, repetitive, administrative junk that doesn’t fulfill any of my career goals. I haven’t received any of the help learning about the technology and how to use it that I was promised. Consequently, I’m singularly uninterested in actually completing the work assigned me.
To top it off, the interns are interested in basically two things: drinking and work. Now, I like drinking as much as the next guy and more than some of them, but it’s too often an end in and of itself, especially with this crowd. Outside of work, I don’t want to talk about work; our strategy for blah blah couldn’t interest me less.
I feel bad, to a degree, for turning my back on the intern community, because I’m sure some of them are in the same boat as me and are actually fun people to be around. The S/N ratio just isn’t high enough to make it productive to find them.
Permalink
Posted in Photo at 6:55 pm by Joe Blubaugh
The setting sun a few weeks ago was brilliant, and I managed to get two good shots of it:
Permalink
Posted in Photo at 6:54 pm by Joe Blubaugh
I went to the zoo this weekend with my family, and the place was just great.
Permalink
07.19.07
Posted in Personal at 6:56 pm by Joe Blubaugh
When I’m at work I frequently find myself indulging a rich fantasy life, because every day makes me wish I was there less and less. I start imagining opening a bar in the New Mexico desert, catering to hard-bitten bikers who couldn’t give a shit about me, so long as I supply beer. There’s another good one I’ve been thinking of recently: walk through the GE MR bays and push all the emergency evacuation buttons, for a total damage of around $2 million. Oh, it’s tempting.
I don’t know what kind of engineers GE wants in their organization, but I’m not it. I had already decided that I should look strongly into grad school, but this summer’s clinched the ‘no corporate job’ sentiment I was already cultivating.
I don’t know what I’m going to do in my end-of-term presentation, but I don’t think it’s going to be very kind to the company.
Permalink
07.16.07
Posted in News, Science! at 9:13 am by Joe Blubaugh
The first royal mummy found since Tutankhamun/Tutankhaten has been identified as Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut was the most powerful female in Egyptian history, the only Egyptian queen to take the title of Pharaoh. As such, she wore the ceremonial garb of pharaohs, including the fake beard and the combined crown. I find it incredibly disingenuous that every article I’ve seen on the subject has contained some variation on this theme:
The mummy was identified as Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled for 20 years in the 15th century B.C., dressing like a man and wearing a fake beard.
I doubt the Egyptian people thought that Hatshepsut was male. Why our news reporters feel compelled to reach back through history and pick on the appearance of the queen of Egypt instead of discussing her reign is beyond me.
This is the HEADLINE of the Yahoo! article:
Mummy Reveals Egyptian Queen Was Fat, Balding and Bearded
Wow.
Permalink
07.13.07
Posted in Personal, Music at 8:00 am by Joe Blubaugh
Last week was one of the laziest of my life, due to the General’s fairly generous 4th of July policy. This week has been one of the busiest as a form of compensation, I think.
From the iPod:
- Royksopp - 40 Year BackCome
- Aimee Mann - It’s Not Safe
- Gustav Mahler - Symphony No 5, Movement V (SF Symphony)
- Hank Williams - Lost Highway
- Metric - Handshakes
- Radiohead - There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.)
- Stephane Grapelli - The Folks Who Live on the Hill
- Lester Young w/ the Oscar Peterson Trio - Just You, Just Me
- Jens Lekman - A Man Walks Into a Bar
- The Cure - Plainsong
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink