Today's lyrics of wisdom, from The Folk Implosion:

Never know what I'm looking for until I find it
Never know where I am until I leave
Not aware that I care until I'm angry
Never know what I'm thinking until I dream

In the second verse, the first line becomes, "Never know what I'm looking for until it finds me." Sneaky. Go buy One Part Lullaby, if you haven't yet. It's good.

Today was kind of a non day. Woke up even earlier than yesterday, continuing the trend of the week. I don't actually like this morning business. If I leave for work before 10 or so, I have traffic problems to deal with. Got to work, had more good coffee, ended up having to explain to a passing cow orker what the french press is. I think I'm going to be known on my floor as the coffee guy.

Had a meeting this afternoon with people from WebTrends. We've been using two older versions of their product (3.0 and 3.5) and they're up to 4.0 now. We have problems with their software, and they're aware of it. They're not, however, fixing it. Instead of making the software faster, or making stuff work better, they're adding more features. Some of the features are things we need, but what we really need is for the problems to be fixed, and speed of the whole thing increased since the biggest problem is speed, or the lack of it. We don't have the available time or computer resources to spread the stuff out so that reports that take six hours to run don't stop everything else. They think they can just get us to sign on the line for their very expensive and not-very-good product. I'm thinking at this point the answer is no. I wouldn't mind buying more horsepower if it were also going to run better software, but it's not better software, and I mind.

After work went to happy hour for another person who just quit, after being invited by Paul, who quit several months ago but is still on the email list for these departure drinkfests. I didn't know Tiffany at all, but she's leaving and I don't need much of an excuse to go drinking. It turns out Tiffany sees her role in life as matchmaker for all her friends, so she invited the guys at the table to a birthday party she's throwing for one of those friends next Friday. I might actually go, just to see if it is indeed possible to meet somebody in this town, except that's the night Emily comes in from Holland and I'll be picking her up at Dulles. I think the last thing Emily wants is to be dragged, jetlagged, along to a birthday party where she knows no one and to which her brother was specifically invited to mingle with single girls. I suppose I could be wrong, but I think not.

Of course there's a further problem with that assortment of people: get two male geeks in a room and they're going to talk to each other and not the girls in the same room, no matter how attractive those girls might be. This has not changed for geeks since, oh, junior high (merely the subject matter under discussion). I'd like to say that I'm not affected by this, but I'd be lying. Who wants to talk to pretty girls when you can figure out over a couple beers, and with the aid a few cocktail napkins and empty beer bottles as props, how it'll be possible to set up a wireless network in the office that'll make it possible to sit in nearby restaurants and use network resources?

There are plenty of single men in NOVA/DC. They just don't know how to talk to girls. FWIW, the girls don't seem to know how to talk to geeks either. The ones that do are already married, it appears. It also appears that technical skills are not selected for in the typical mating process.

Agh. Tomato sauce on pasta for dinner = heartburn after dinner. I think it's time for Alka Seltzer and bed.

link (2000-03-02)

So I should be in bed already. I'm tired, even, and would quite possibly fall asleep soon based on this week's sleeping patterns. But there's the matter of the undone laundry, and if I go to bed now I won't have any socks tomorrow. So the washer's going and I'm here. When I can throw the whites in the dryer I'll go to bed.

Anyway, I was thinking more about this coffee thing. I wasn't always a coffee drinker. I can actually name the date I started drinking coffee: 26 December 1991.

I had taken a class in German at Tulsa Junior College that previous summer taught by a mulatto whose mother was German, and whose father was a black soldier who had been stationed in Germany. Due to the color of his skin he was often persecuted in and around school, and as a result throughout his childhood he moved back and forth from his mother's hometown in Germany (Selb, on the border with what was then Czechoslovakia) to his father's hometown in the states (Tulsa). He maintained strong ties to both cities and while he lived in Tulsa and worked in a brokerage, he flew back to Germany whenever time and money allowed.

It turned out that one of his travel tricks was to start watching airfaires around September, as the airlines would deeply discount fares at that time for certain holiday dates that hadn't filled up yet. He was persuaded to see about arranging a trip for those of us in the class who might be able to go, and when the tickets became available ($340 r/t from Tulsa to Frankfurt) several of us jumped at the opportunity. The catch, of course, was that we flew out at noon on Christmas and flew back the second of January.

So the group of us made our arrangements, and Herr Richardson (for that was his name) got several families in Selb to volunteer to host some of us as their guests for the week. The trip involved flying to Frankfurt (an overnighter), picking up rental cars there, and then driving across the width of southern Germany to get to Selb. There was a combination of snow, rain, freezing rain, and sleet the entire day, and it took us about 6 hours of driving to get to our final destination.

Our host family (several of us stayed in one house, which had three guest bedrooms in the basement) had prepared a table full of cakes and pastries (much as you'd see for afternoon tea) and offered us coffee as soon as we'd gotten our coats removed.

I couldn't say no. I can see it now, "no thanks, I've traveled all this way to spend the week in your house, and I'd like to take this opportunity to start off on the wrong foot by turning down your hospitality." That would have gone over really well. So regardless of the fact that I didn't like coffee up to that point, I was in for it.

So I took the proffered mug, added a dollop of milk and a spoon or two of sugar, and drank. The rest, as they say, is history.

Once I discovered that coffee elsewhere tasted something like it smelled (I'd always thought coffee was a cruel joke, smelling so good and then tasting so brackish) I set out on a mission back in the states to find a source for good coffee. Luckily I didn't have to look too far, as my friend Ben worked for a coffee roaster and he kept me in good supply of freshly roasted beans.

Of course, that was three cities ago and Ben hasn't worked for the coffee roaster in probably 8 years now. I've been through several other sources for beans (I'm sure my coffee club member card at Mecca (you can find anything on the web) is still in their little file box with all my pounds of Kenya AA, Viennese Roast, and the oddly described Danish Breakfast recorded, and damn Roasters on the Hill for going out of business) but I'm still as fussy about my coffee as I was when I started drinking the stuff in the first place.

Washer's done. I'm gonna dry my socks and go to bed.

link (2000-03-02)