Thursday, August 02, 2001
And the names! oh god, the names!
Look me in the eye and tell me that Brett isn't a frattie name. Or Casey. ...can you? CAN YOU? no, I didn't *think* so.
My dad was a frat boy. Course, that was probably back when Art was a frat name. But his nickname was the Whale, because he was chubby and could drink so much. Heh. He ain't chubby no more, but I bet he can still drink like a mofo. He and my mom both get all giggly when they're drunk. It's funny as hell. It probably wouldn't be if they did it more often, though...
Look me in the eye and tell me that Brett isn't a frattie name. Or Casey. ...can you? CAN YOU? no, I didn't *think* so.
My dad was a frat boy. Course, that was probably back when Art was a frat name. But his nickname was the Whale, because he was chubby and could drink so much. Heh. He ain't chubby no more, but I bet he can still drink like a mofo. He and my mom both get all giggly when they're drunk. It's funny as hell. It probably wouldn't be if they did it more often, though...
Well, there's a *shocker*...
How did I know that the boys over at wastedlife.com were fratties? You can tell by the pictures, what they talk about and, uh, their language.
What is it about guys that look like this? Those dazed faces, spiked/bleached haircuts, the thick necks - 9/10 times they're frat boys. I don't know why those type of physical characteristics almost always land a guy in a frat house. It's like the Hitler youth. It's similar with sorority girls, but not always. For instance, Rachel would almost certainly be a sorority chick, but she's not.... I don't think she is, anyway. AFAIK, Kelly "Kappa" C. is the only sorority girl in our ID class... well, sororities might be more of a CD thing.
Gawd, look at that. I'm using graffitispeak on blog. Pretty soon I'll be ending my postings with a dot on a line by itself. Blegh.
My enthusiasm has died down. I want to read. :P
How did I know that the boys over at wastedlife.com were fratties? You can tell by the pictures, what they talk about and, uh, their language.
What is it about guys that look like this? Those dazed faces, spiked/bleached haircuts, the thick necks - 9/10 times they're frat boys. I don't know why those type of physical characteristics almost always land a guy in a frat house. It's like the Hitler youth. It's similar with sorority girls, but not always. For instance, Rachel would almost certainly be a sorority chick, but she's not.... I don't think she is, anyway. AFAIK, Kelly "Kappa" C. is the only sorority girl in our ID class... well, sororities might be more of a CD thing.
Gawd, look at that. I'm using graffitispeak on blog. Pretty soon I'll be ending my postings with a dot on a line by itself. Blegh.
My enthusiasm has died down. I want to read. :P
I love the new book I'm reading. I don't want to put it down. It is more a children's book than most of my literature, but it's very enjoyable. I never knew Disney stole 'The Sword in the Stone' almost totally from him.... T.H. White, "The Once and Future King". Merlyn and Arthur (of course, he's still the Wart now). They just turned into fish and went into the moat.
If I have kids, I'll read this to them. :)
If I have kids, I'll read this to them. :)
Diane Ochi is a fucking genius. I have so much to learn...
I've been fighting with this trash can idea for so long, and it kept getting more and more complicated. How do I solve this problem and this problem and this problem... well, I kept coming up with seperate solutions for each problem. Wrong approach. I talk to Diane and within an hour she has like 10 of my problems fixed, and fixed well. By combining a bunch of solutions - I mean, she did look at one of my sketches and get the idea, but it was totally hers. Sometimes, you know, you're thinking along the same lines as someone else, and you both come up with the idea at once - not so, in this case. All her. Fantastic stuff. Wonderful.
I might actually be able to get this done, and done well. Maybe if I hadn't been slacking off and reading random websites for the last few days, I could have actually gotten something done. I should have talked to her sooner - and done some more sketches. I just came up with a few ideas that came close to working but were kind of a pain in the ass, and figured I was 'done enough'. Then Don came and gave me all these new problems and I kind of abandoned it, but knowing all the while I needed to talk with Diane. So finally I did, and shabam, it's good stuff. I'm halfway there, I just need to finalize the idea, get the details down, and make a decent sketch (yikes) so we can get it to a small metal manufacturer and get it made.
Sometimes I think that everyone would come up with the same ideas I do, but most people don't take the time, or give a shit, to think about the things I think about, in the way I think about them. As in, people complain about stuff, but they never think of how to fix it. And sometimes they don't think it's worth fixing, or they don't even realize that it's a problem until someone else points it out. I'm basically just here to connect a bunch of people, and get them talking to each other, or to me, and combine all of their ideas into something that works. I'm not sure, myself, how much I actually contribute. I may just pick and choose among the ideas that are given and try to decide which ones will work together, and which ones will piss the other group off.
I guess that's a valuable skill in and of itself, but that conceit in me wants to be able to do it *all by myself*. Of course that can't happen, and if it did, it'd be a bad idea. I just have to release my vanity and hopes of doing a save-the-day deal, where I fly in, listen to the problem, fix it, and fly out. That's not how things are done. Not if they're done well, anyway. These people have been here longer, they're more specialized than I am, they've studied or interacted with the problem/product/system/etc for years, and I've only been here for a few weeks. Maybe by providing information that they were unsure of, I can prompt them to give me the right idea.
I dunno. Maybe if I had thought or sketched about this more, I would have come up with the idea. It's staggeringly simple. I can't see how it wouldn't work better than anything else I was thinking about, and certainly better that what's already out there. The only problem is the money. Will Don agree to just build new things instead of retrofitting the old, which will in and of itself be time consuming, expensive, and altogether a waste of time since no one will use it? Where will the money come from? I know maintenance doesn't have any. They need to cut 3/4 of a million dollars from their budget, and it won't be coming back anytime soon. Meanwhile, I'm telling them to buy more expensive products and to replace things that essentially already work (not well, but they are functional). The association can take some of it, since they are doing site furnishings, but traditionally maintenance pays for this stuff. Then there's the SFCC - if I make this a combination recycle/trash bin, will they pull funds/grants to pay for them? How much will they pay? Can they even get the money?? How many cans do we need total? How many now? Where do we need them?
And then, how do we get the trash into the truck...
So many things to think about! Ah! I'm glad, though. Strange, I watched West Wing last night (Bradbury Thompson is so hot - is that his name?) and they were all pissed and defeated about their jobs, until finally the president said, to hell with everyone, I'm doing what I want to do. Which is, of course, what he should do anyway. And they were all happy and set to work with a newfound sense of energy and purpose. I love TV, it's so stupid. ;) But it's strangely reminiscent (sp) of how I feel now... now I know what to do, and what I want to do, and what I'm trying to do, and how I should do it. Well, mostly.
Back to work! Wheeeee!
I've been fighting with this trash can idea for so long, and it kept getting more and more complicated. How do I solve this problem and this problem and this problem... well, I kept coming up with seperate solutions for each problem. Wrong approach. I talk to Diane and within an hour she has like 10 of my problems fixed, and fixed well. By combining a bunch of solutions - I mean, she did look at one of my sketches and get the idea, but it was totally hers. Sometimes, you know, you're thinking along the same lines as someone else, and you both come up with the idea at once - not so, in this case. All her. Fantastic stuff. Wonderful.
I might actually be able to get this done, and done well. Maybe if I hadn't been slacking off and reading random websites for the last few days, I could have actually gotten something done. I should have talked to her sooner - and done some more sketches. I just came up with a few ideas that came close to working but were kind of a pain in the ass, and figured I was 'done enough'. Then Don came and gave me all these new problems and I kind of abandoned it, but knowing all the while I needed to talk with Diane. So finally I did, and shabam, it's good stuff. I'm halfway there, I just need to finalize the idea, get the details down, and make a decent sketch (yikes) so we can get it to a small metal manufacturer and get it made.
Sometimes I think that everyone would come up with the same ideas I do, but most people don't take the time, or give a shit, to think about the things I think about, in the way I think about them. As in, people complain about stuff, but they never think of how to fix it. And sometimes they don't think it's worth fixing, or they don't even realize that it's a problem until someone else points it out. I'm basically just here to connect a bunch of people, and get them talking to each other, or to me, and combine all of their ideas into something that works. I'm not sure, myself, how much I actually contribute. I may just pick and choose among the ideas that are given and try to decide which ones will work together, and which ones will piss the other group off.
I guess that's a valuable skill in and of itself, but that conceit in me wants to be able to do it *all by myself*. Of course that can't happen, and if it did, it'd be a bad idea. I just have to release my vanity and hopes of doing a save-the-day deal, where I fly in, listen to the problem, fix it, and fly out. That's not how things are done. Not if they're done well, anyway. These people have been here longer, they're more specialized than I am, they've studied or interacted with the problem/product/system/etc for years, and I've only been here for a few weeks. Maybe by providing information that they were unsure of, I can prompt them to give me the right idea.
I dunno. Maybe if I had thought or sketched about this more, I would have come up with the idea. It's staggeringly simple. I can't see how it wouldn't work better than anything else I was thinking about, and certainly better that what's already out there. The only problem is the money. Will Don agree to just build new things instead of retrofitting the old, which will in and of itself be time consuming, expensive, and altogether a waste of time since no one will use it? Where will the money come from? I know maintenance doesn't have any. They need to cut 3/4 of a million dollars from their budget, and it won't be coming back anytime soon. Meanwhile, I'm telling them to buy more expensive products and to replace things that essentially already work (not well, but they are functional). The association can take some of it, since they are doing site furnishings, but traditionally maintenance pays for this stuff. Then there's the SFCC - if I make this a combination recycle/trash bin, will they pull funds/grants to pay for them? How much will they pay? Can they even get the money?? How many cans do we need total? How many now? Where do we need them?
And then, how do we get the trash into the truck...
So many things to think about! Ah! I'm glad, though. Strange, I watched West Wing last night (Bradbury Thompson is so hot - is that his name?) and they were all pissed and defeated about their jobs, until finally the president said, to hell with everyone, I'm doing what I want to do. Which is, of course, what he should do anyway. And they were all happy and set to work with a newfound sense of energy and purpose. I love TV, it's so stupid. ;) But it's strangely reminiscent (sp) of how I feel now... now I know what to do, and what I want to do, and what I'm trying to do, and how I should do it. Well, mostly.
Back to work! Wheeeee!
Wednesday, August 01, 2001
sonofabitch. All of CMUs computers are down, and no one else. damn damn damn damn, to quote enry iggins. and I've got a headache, even though I've eaten... I'm probably dehydrated again. Come to think of it, the only liquid I've had is the milk in my cereal and that yellow cling stuff that comes with canned peaches. Mmmmm.... cling.
Maybe I have a brain tumor... I'm really a mess. My eyes are red and watery, my mouth is just all fucked up, my head hurts... I'm going to have to tell Tom's of Maine to tone down their Cinnamint toothpaste. I can't feel my lips anymore, and I haven't even used it for two days (ew) because it hurts so bad, and I think it's why my mouth tastes coppery. Bitch moan bitch moan..
yayyy free money! Winnie just brought me 130 dollars to pay for transportation. Rawk.
oy, my head. hurts. ow.
I'm researching green cleaners, and seeing what we already use, which I know is harmful both to the environment and to the workers, even though Theron says it's 'green'. Bullshit. Anything with Volatile Organic Compounds or a significant health hazard rating cannot be green. I can't help but think that if it's really bad for us, then it has to be somewhat bad for the environment. I mean, we have watersheds and wetlands and spawning endangered salmon that not only affect the health of animals and plants (which is why we're here anyway), but also the health of our workers and the people who live here.
I'm just worried that they'll say it's not strong enough, doesn't kill enough organisms and viruses. Which I understand, if you disinfect bathrooms all day you want to be damn sure you don't get sick doing it.
Proctor and Gamble are pure evil. EVIIIIIL. I'm researching their toilet bowl cleaner, which I *know* isn't green, and in equal measure with their product websites I get boycott websites from animal rights groups. This shit is horrible, cruel, disgusting.. I'm going to write another letter to Allergan. I don't give a shit if they comply with the animal welfare act, even if it's better than nothing.. they need to stop. I'm sorry, but humans are so much more evil than animals are, and there's fucking six million of us. I don't see why we continue to say that we can't test on humans when we test on animals.
But would you want to be the one tested on, you say? Well, my answer is that we know enough about this shit that we have a pretty good guess about what will be horribly dangerous. If we are forced to come up with new products or chemicals or drugs, there should be many levels of non-animal testing that it goes through first - fake skin, or petri-dish skin, for instance. Then once you're reasonably sure it's safe, test it on humans. The data will be more applicable than testing on freaked out rabbits. I mean, animal testing approved thalidomide, for god's sake. And if pennicilin had been tested on dogs, it never would have gone on the market. Same thing with chocolate. Hellooooooooooo... I would understand a little more if the results were dependable, or if we followed the results very closely, but we DON'T. It's just habit, something to get funding, something to save their asses if something goes wrong.. "Well, the *rats* were okay, so we started a full-scale marketing campaign. How were we supposed to know that it gives babies 3 arms??"
Oh, and mental note - never buy Iams pet food. They killed puppies researching its effects. You know those claims that it 'builds strong bones'? You know how they found that out? They ripped the bones out of the legs of dogs and snapped them in half to see if they were any stronger. There *are* better ways to do that (and no, it doesn't involve breaking the dog's legs when they're still inside the dog.)
Gahhhh, my bleeding heart thunders with rage. Roaaar.
Maybe I have a brain tumor... I'm really a mess. My eyes are red and watery, my mouth is just all fucked up, my head hurts... I'm going to have to tell Tom's of Maine to tone down their Cinnamint toothpaste. I can't feel my lips anymore, and I haven't even used it for two days (ew) because it hurts so bad, and I think it's why my mouth tastes coppery. Bitch moan bitch moan..
yayyy free money! Winnie just brought me 130 dollars to pay for transportation. Rawk.
oy, my head. hurts. ow.
I'm researching green cleaners, and seeing what we already use, which I know is harmful both to the environment and to the workers, even though Theron says it's 'green'. Bullshit. Anything with Volatile Organic Compounds or a significant health hazard rating cannot be green. I can't help but think that if it's really bad for us, then it has to be somewhat bad for the environment. I mean, we have watersheds and wetlands and spawning endangered salmon that not only affect the health of animals and plants (which is why we're here anyway), but also the health of our workers and the people who live here.
I'm just worried that they'll say it's not strong enough, doesn't kill enough organisms and viruses. Which I understand, if you disinfect bathrooms all day you want to be damn sure you don't get sick doing it.
Proctor and Gamble are pure evil. EVIIIIIL. I'm researching their toilet bowl cleaner, which I *know* isn't green, and in equal measure with their product websites I get boycott websites from animal rights groups. This shit is horrible, cruel, disgusting.. I'm going to write another letter to Allergan. I don't give a shit if they comply with the animal welfare act, even if it's better than nothing.. they need to stop. I'm sorry, but humans are so much more evil than animals are, and there's fucking six million of us. I don't see why we continue to say that we can't test on humans when we test on animals.
But would you want to be the one tested on, you say? Well, my answer is that we know enough about this shit that we have a pretty good guess about what will be horribly dangerous. If we are forced to come up with new products or chemicals or drugs, there should be many levels of non-animal testing that it goes through first - fake skin, or petri-dish skin, for instance. Then once you're reasonably sure it's safe, test it on humans. The data will be more applicable than testing on freaked out rabbits. I mean, animal testing approved thalidomide, for god's sake. And if pennicilin had been tested on dogs, it never would have gone on the market. Same thing with chocolate. Hellooooooooooo... I would understand a little more if the results were dependable, or if we followed the results very closely, but we DON'T. It's just habit, something to get funding, something to save their asses if something goes wrong.. "Well, the *rats* were okay, so we started a full-scale marketing campaign. How were we supposed to know that it gives babies 3 arms??"
Oh, and mental note - never buy Iams pet food. They killed puppies researching its effects. You know those claims that it 'builds strong bones'? You know how they found that out? They ripped the bones out of the legs of dogs and snapped them in half to see if they were any stronger. There *are* better ways to do that (and no, it doesn't involve breaking the dog's legs when they're still inside the dog.)
Gahhhh, my bleeding heart thunders with rage. Roaaar.
Haaa ha -- at last, the site is up! I, like men with free porn, will never close this window again! Ha ha!
I haven't been able to get to anything cmu related for two days. I'm not sure if this is only my problem or if everyone else is having similar difficulties. If no one can get to my blog, (ha, as if anyone would try), they would be very surprised at the obnoxious amount of posting I've done lately.
The web at work is always spotty.. only some random big sites come up, like grainger and cooking light, but then google is down... wtf? Then it'll switch, I get google but none of the links work. Blegh.
I'm researching which metals to build my trashcans out of - there was some wonderful website I found through howthingswork.com - I think it was.... uh.... corrosionsource.com. It had a way to calculate how materials would react when put in different environments. I assume some of these don't really mean environments... like mayonnaise. I mean, how often is a material going to be completely submerged in mayonnaise?
But anyway, apparently the only metal that they had listed that did not have any reaction with either urine or salt water was BRONZE. I wonder how expensive it is... and how well things like fasteners and such hold up. Expensive trashcans, but they won't rust when they get peed on at the beach!! I always wondered why people had things 'bronzed' and never 'steeled' or 'aluminumed' or what have you. Now I know.
shit. all the sites are down again. How am I supposed to waste my day if I can't do anything online? spllbbbbbt.
at least I have a soundtrack now. I got all my mp3s on this cd and I'm listening to them very very quietly. I knew I should have brought my headphones, then maybe people wouldn't mistake me for the secretary. Is that spelled correctly? It looks like secrete-ary.
sooooo tired. and I have pinkeye. yech.
I haven't been able to get to anything cmu related for two days. I'm not sure if this is only my problem or if everyone else is having similar difficulties. If no one can get to my blog, (ha, as if anyone would try), they would be very surprised at the obnoxious amount of posting I've done lately.
The web at work is always spotty.. only some random big sites come up, like grainger and cooking light, but then google is down... wtf? Then it'll switch, I get google but none of the links work. Blegh.
I'm researching which metals to build my trashcans out of - there was some wonderful website I found through howthingswork.com - I think it was.... uh.... corrosionsource.com. It had a way to calculate how materials would react when put in different environments. I assume some of these don't really mean environments... like mayonnaise. I mean, how often is a material going to be completely submerged in mayonnaise?
But anyway, apparently the only metal that they had listed that did not have any reaction with either urine or salt water was BRONZE. I wonder how expensive it is... and how well things like fasteners and such hold up. Expensive trashcans, but they won't rust when they get peed on at the beach!! I always wondered why people had things 'bronzed' and never 'steeled' or 'aluminumed' or what have you. Now I know.
shit. all the sites are down again. How am I supposed to waste my day if I can't do anything online? spllbbbbbt.
at least I have a soundtrack now. I got all my mp3s on this cd and I'm listening to them very very quietly. I knew I should have brought my headphones, then maybe people wouldn't mistake me for the secretary. Is that spelled correctly? It looks like secrete-ary.
sooooo tired. and I have pinkeye. yech.
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