"I can tell it's gonna be a good day"

i drove to work this morning to this song: A Good Day, by Priscilla Ahn (click her name; the song is playing on her website). it's a nice, slow, gradually-waking-up song -- the kind of song that brings to mind opening your eyes to a sunbeam dancing over the hair of the pretty girl who was peeking through the curtains to see if the dog next door was up and playing yet. as i drove in silent reverie, i thought to myself, i think i will strive to have a good day today.

the work day started out well enough. i received notification that an employee had some difficulty retrieving an attachment he opened directly in Outlook and saved to the temporary folder and i was asked to document the retrieval procedure. it took about half an hour of research and drafting and screenshotting -- about 2 times faster than most procedures i've been documenting lately. it was that quick because most of the process was documented in a previous write up about managing the OLK temporary folder.

an hour later, my supervisor asked me to write up some alternative methods that did not involve the registry editor, which is understandably daunting for most users. so i dug up some alternative methods and documented those.

towards the end of the day, i receive an email that was sent to me and my supervisor saying, "Regarding Herman's response to this issue, please review our concerns with him. I do not think he understands that it was not that simple."

i'm not one to get mad easily, especially at work, but i was quietly livid.

i was angry not so much that the document was not to his satisfaction, even though i take great pride in writing as concisely and as clearly as possible, but at the fact he wrote as if i was not even there, all the while including me in the email.

i toyed with the idea of writing a magnanimously patient response asking him for clarification about which specific part of the document he did not understand and would like addressed, but my suspicion is that the document was not actually read. i held my tongue, as it were, and just went to see my boss about it. she has far more experience dealing with this sort of thing, and her insight into the matter was that they just wanted to have their hands held.

i wasted the rest of the work day taking step-by-step screenshots of how to use Windows' Search function, and how to search for hidden files and folders. it was brutal. but i promised myself i would have a good day.

---

i sat in on a Hosanna cell group program tonight, filling in for our pastor who was away at a General Meeting in Ottawa. so with half a dozen high school guys, we watched I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. yeah, the movie about to guys pretending to be gay. definitely some strong discussion questions that could have arisen from that movie, especially pertaining to male self-image and doing what's right, even when it hurts.

as i was about to go home, i discovered that my car had been scraped up while it was parked at the side of the street. the driver side mirror was folded in, the mirror jarred loose and the corner shattered from the impact against the car door. the bumper under the headlight was where the scrape occured. there was no note, and the fact that the mirror was still folded was evidence that whoever hit my car did not even bother to get out and check what he, or she, hit.

for the second time in one day, i was incensed.

i had a passenger to drive back, so i let that fleeting flash of fury pass and approached the situation as objectively as i could. i considered Encylopedia Browning the matter, and i actually talked to the guy in the house i parked outside of to see if he saw or heard anything (or looked guilty). i was too tired to care any further than that. on the way home, i mused about and i promised myself i would have a good day.

everytime i insist on having a good day, some woe befalls me. then again, it could be that i am prompted by God to strive for a positive day when woe is scheduled to befall me, so i am pre-emptively prepared for disasters that would normally derail me.

Getting Out of Getting Hit On

"How come no one has harassed me yet?"

- from the Sexual Harassment Complaints Box

For some, getting hit on is an irritation; for others, it is a longed-for luxury. Fact: they're both jealous of each others' ability/inability to get hit on.

For the uninitiated, 'hitting on' someone is a display of attention, subtle or overt, for purposes ranging from self-indulgence in hopes of assauging a fragmentary relationship with an absentee parent to genuine interest in lifelong loving commitment.

For the most part, males are the precipitators of this social intercourse, while females are the recipients. Much has been said about how the male species ought to comport themselves in such a situation to ensure the continuation of their genetic lineage, but precious little has been said about how females can refuse advances effectively to ensure their genetic lineage is not tainted with undesireable traits.

To begin our exploration of this uncharted realm, we must first investigate how the male approaches his quarry before we can discuss how he can be stopped at each stage of his endeavour.

Stage 1: Sight Lines
Males primarily rely on their sight to identify prospective females. The best way to get out of being hit on is to not be hit on at all. Therefore, the main goal is to appear undesirable even if seen. Females can obfuscate their visibility by a variety of methods:

Physical Interference: use the environment to your advantage, ex. hiding behind obstacles, to prevent being seen at all.

Numerical Interference: there is safety in numbers. stay in groups to overwhelm him with too many choices.

Relative Interference: hide yourself in the shadow of someone who can draw off attention, in the same way that Jupiter's immense gravity field wards off asteroid and comets from striking the Earth or the Sun's brilliance washes out the light of the stars.

Mimicry Interference: the perfectly edible Viceroy Butterfly resembles the poisonous Monarch Butterfly and thus hides in plain sight by virtue of being undesirable. Females can adopt this defensive mechanism by exhibiting undesirable traits, ex. public excavation of dried mucus from the nasal cavity.

A difficulty occurs when a female is both vying for attention from a specific person and trying to avoid attention from everyone else. In such a case, an awareness of your surroundings and 'audience' will attract the right male and ward off the rest.

Stage 2: The Approach
Once a female is singled out, the male will try to make his presence known through acts of manliness (headbutting, chest thumping, loud talking) and moving into the female's proximity. Advances are best avoided as early as possible with minimum communication before momentum is built up. Therefore, to avoid being hit on, one must recognize the signs of approach and raise warning of disinterest in advance. Here are a few effective, non-verbal warning signs:

Evasive Maneuvers: most males do not like to be obvious about their intent (at least to third parties), so forcing him to take a meandering, circuitous route to reach your side will be enough to throw him off his game (if he is weak).

Focus Group: take advantage of the presence of your group of friends. The ideal Approach a male desires is one-on-one interaction. Maintain your focus on the group conversation, as any eye contact with the approaching male will only serve to bolster his confidence. Keep him out in the open surrounded by your peers who can cast judgmental glances. Any thoughts of funny business will quickly turn into thoughts of self-defense.

Blunt Force Trauma: if he is within earshot, turn your conversation towards the blunt, hard truth about being a woman. Loud, heated discussions on menstruation, birth canal tearing, mammary gland infections etc. will turn anyone who is not absolutely serious about loving you around.

Stage 3: Conversation
The primary desired result of hitting on a female is for the male to enter her sphere of attention. At this stage, any attention is considered good attention by the male. When a conversation is initiated, the female must reply (because females are incapable of being that rude). Provided the above steps were taken to try to prevent a conversation, the only males that make it this far are a) genuinely interested, b) unconventional and sneaky enough to avoid detection, c) using the power of technology to circumvent stages 1 and 2 (instant messaging, Facebook, email, blog posts with thinly-veiled metaphors and references). Situation a) is probably the most difficult to deal with because it hurts to hurt someone who is genuinely investing time and effort into getting to know you. This does not mean you should give him a chance if you've already decided that he is not a potential. Euthanize his hopes in no uncertain terms, or else he'll come back for seconds due to selective hearing. The following are some examples of effective hope euthanization methods:

"Sorry, I'm not interested in starting a relationship with you."

"My boyfriend/fiancee/husband was thinking of getting that [gadget] too!"

"This ring is really straining my shoulder. I'm not used to the weight."

If, however, the male's courage and persistence is found to be admirable, and your feelings about him range from ambivalent to we-could-make-beautiful-babies, you're looking at a free lunch at the least.

Disclaimer:
The preceding were merely suggestions and should not be taken as Gospel, or even scientific truth. In the event that the male in question is clearly a creep, get the hell out of there.

Why We Write

on wednesday, i was linked an awesome blog; one particular post caught my eye.
for the first time since Opera 9.5 came out, i was happy that the internet was invented and that it has evolved towards user-generated content, rather than commercial fluff. there are some really excellent writers out there who wouldn't have had even the remotest chance of making it into my brain if it weren't for the internet.

of course, the internet is not all good and gravy. the gold is hidden in the dross and muck and refuse and detritus; it takes a good deal of work and luck to find a nugget worth holding on to. it's the same with life and love and work and everything else. there will be good times and bad times; sweet moments that you wish could last forever and painful moments that you wish would go away; days when the productivity is peaking and days when you just want to switch all the keys on the keyboard with someone else's.

what i really like about this example is that he writes the way i want to be writing 10 years from now. it's like looking into the future. i've found a few similar writers who have travelled down the same path i'm on now. they write down their memories, experiences and insights for their own reasons (like i'm doing now); somewhere down the road, it helps someone else understand his or her own world in a different perspective.

while most of my writings have been frivolous, whimsical or downright awkward, i do hope some of them turn out to be someone's gold one day.

the way things change

change is in the air. i can feel it.

the one big ability our mortality affords us is the ability and motivation to change*. changes come in all stripes: good, bad, positive, negative, reinforcing, deconstructing; what those stripes are depend on your interpretation. are zebras white equines with black stripes, or black equines with white swaths of hair**? someone go shave a zebra please.

apart from the subjective changes, there are also objective changes: categories of change that have no element of interpretation.

i have a pair of stereo headphones that came with a little radio i got back in the late 90s. i thought they were cool, because of the way they wrapped around my head and bent to fit into my ears. i've used them consistently as computer headphones for the past 2 years. a few weeks ago, i noticed that the sound from the left side was noticably missing. after doing a quick diagnosis (plug in different speakers/headphones while running the same video), i've concluded that this pair of headphones has changed, i.e. failed, just through the daily grind of being worn and translating electronic pulses into timpanic vibrations. this kind of change is what i would call an Environmental Change, like erosion or tectonic motion; it just happens.

Environmental Changes can be positive or negative; by positive, i mean additive, like how the Mississipi River deposits silt at the Gulf of Mexico to form a delta, and by negative, i mean subtractive, like winds of the Arctic carve away at boulders.

the other objective change is the Deliberate Change, where an agent or sentient force exacts a premeditated alteration to something that is not operating in the desired way. in psychological terms, this would probably be Operant Conditioning. when i first started to use my laptop, it would not connect to wireless networks automatically, requiring mouse movement to click on the network manager icon and selection of the desired network. you know how much i hate unnecessary mouse movement***. so in an effort to become more efficient, i exacted a change that allowed me to connect to networks automatically, but sacrificed a hardware button to turn off my wireless card. this resulted in further changes, whereby the wireless card was disabled through keyboard shortcut. the rest of the story is documented in its entirety in a previous post.

by nature, or by intervention, i am being positioned for something promising and interesting. old paradigms crumble in place of different, and hopefully better ones.

* yes, BSG viewers, i totally swiped that from Natalie-Six.
** polar bears have black skin and clear fur.
*** i know some people that still click the Enter button with their mice after entering something into a form field.

"what do you do at work?"

i make stuff like this:

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