royal highness

so... this morning began lazy and happy. still glowing from yesterday's experience. the weather was as fine as i felt.

it's a timing thing: i was working on scripting my sketches when metro sat down beside me again. apparently we both have favourite seats :)

speaking of which, office seating politics made shunting people around complicated. in the evening i'd have a long chat with our cfo about our environment and he liked what he heard and has promised to explore options that suit our team.

i have to train someone tomorrow in something i'm not familiar with - the cto was supposed to teach me today but i couldn't get hold of him in spite of my having made an appointment. huh?!

my plan for the day was to explore implementing something in node.js, but managing the team took precedence. there was a lot of it going on...

---i left work in time to shop before training, originally planning on jiu-jitsu and beginner's kickboxing but then switching to advanced kickboxing on the off chance i'd see gg. she wasn't there, but i'm so glad i changed my mind!

there's a fifty year old woman who trains with us who, just like the old guy, is a tank. firstly, i was fortunate to have her holding pads for me on the circuit because she wasn't afraid to tell me exactly what i was doing wrong at every step. and boy, was she right! i could the difference every time i got what she was saying, and it felt good.

i got to do impact / conditioning with her. i started, and her explanations of how i'm supposed to be handling my body were the first i've received. she was hurting me by the end, but i actually felt like i knew what i was doing and once the striking stopped i felt surprisingly good. a little more compact, in a sense :P

then it was her turn. not only did it feel like i was hitting a wall, but it wasn't hard enough for her so she taught me precisely how to angle my gloves and repeatedly corrected my strikes until i started getting through. the weird bit was feeling proud and ashamed simultaneously every time i landed a solid shot...

... shit, that's one tough lady.

---i came home to find i've been headhunted by another BIG company with a very interesting offer. how exciting and flattering! after thinking about it for a bit, though, it doesn't seem to be in my interests. aside from being in love with montreal and its people, this is not only the best place for me to immigrate to in terms of process but it's also the home of a lot of good aerospace; american aerospace cannot employ foreigners so even though spacex, bigelow and virgin have job opportunities that i'm perfectly suited for i wouldn't be able to work there...

i've spent my whole night talking on the phone with my mum or chatting on messenger and facebook. shit! i have stuff to do! and i almost didn't finish my dinner again :(

---two completely unrelated thoughts:

1. an ex-coworker has been ignoring me whenever he comes in to freelance, and i was informed that the reason for this is that he believes that my reaction to cam2 was borne of racism (as opposed to my complete intolerance of incompetence). i find this hurtful, and i'd try to take it up with him if i hadn't been warned not to. there's not much one can do to undo that kind of sentiment, though.

as my mom rightly said, though, it would be racist to have kept him on simply because of the colour of his skin.

2. i really, really, really have to learn french! it's ridiculous and irresponsible that i've been so unmotivated.

manic for sure

i was a long day, most of it a bit unpleasant. in addition to our network going down repeatedly (making most of us quite useless and frustrated), imperieux and i being locked out of our office for over half an hour because of a "five minute" phone call, being asked by megaman if i ever went to school (i think he was trying to be funny, but it came across shockingly condescending) and experiencing an otherwise meaningless lunch fail that had most of the development team laughing at me (not with me), i was really tired both physically and mentally and the coffee didn't help at all.

oh, yes: and aota and i had to take newk'd aside an give him an official warning for repeated tardiness. not cool.

i did have a very positive conversation with the cto, though, and it looks like work and an external interest just combined in my favour.

---i was exhausted by the time i met with metro, and so my pitch really wasn't as enthusiastic as usual. even so, she seems as professional as she is interested, she's definitely more experienced than mason, and she'll be available to get on things in about two weeks. and we totally agree on attitude towards the project! very cool. i have a good feeling about this.

kickboxing:
i did see gg between classes, and i think i made things awkward. without actually saying anything, so i guess there's a good chance that i was just being awkward all by myself. in any event the training was solid.

after showering i began my mars one application. trippy! and now that i've read through the faq i know exactly what my video needs to look like. and that if their criteria are to be believed i actually stand a good chance!

...

i suddenly found myself bouncing up and down to the music, and i've been on a crazy high since.

...

i spent the following couple of hours playing with node.js. node.js is awesome.

---i discovered today that i'm not the only one enjoying the summer but missing the snowboarding.

forehead smack

ha! i forgot two things:

1. last night i booked tickets to see SxS and flighthub's cancellation insurance seemed reasonable until i was billed for it as a per day fee instead of once-off. i called them this morning to get a refund, they were very polite and by the time i put the phone down i already had received an email confirmation and the guy had gotten it right. i was shocked!

2. the illustrator i met on the metro is happy to meet with me after work tomorrow :)

an awaited long weekend

last night:

the pilot episode of star trek: the next generation was interesting (although the psychic character was just tedious), but what really captivated me was trying to catch riker sitting down.

i managed to get into bed early. i needed it.

---it was a good morning, sunny and with me feeling considerably less stiff and sore. as i sat down on the metro, i noticed that the girl next to me was sketching. after furtively glancing at her page and ascertaining that i liked her work, i thought about asking her if she'd be interested in working with me. i believe that bothering strangers in a closed space isn't cool, so i didn't, but then i thought about how these are the kinds of opportunities that might turn out to be really good, and then i thought "no, you can't do that" and then "really? are you really going to do this?"
by that stage we'd passed three stations, and i was running out of time. "sod it," i thought, and i popped out my headphones and said "excuse me" in my most casual voice.

my gods, she literally jumped out of her seat with a frightened squeal! i hit a 10.0 on my awkward-o-meter, and quickly apologized for scaring her. i then asked if she's currently working on a project, and she told me she's working part-time on a video game for one of the big companies. i asked if she'd be interested in working on comics, she asked me if i had a card, i babbled about arranging a meeting and she told me she'd send me her portfolio. nice!

we then proceeded to ignore each other for the rest of the ride, except to say goodbye with smiles. i'm so proud of myself for taking the chance :)

---i got in to a bit of a nightmare. the first part was what appeared to be a ddos attack on one of our servers. the second part... have i mentioned hating mysteries? two of our servers, one local and one remotely hosted, both completely disconnected, began to exhibit the same really strange behaviour. when we finally established what the foundation of that behaviour was and were even more mystified, everything went back to normal. wtf?

the rest of my day was spent managing, with one incident of my having to take a developer aside and instill in him a real fear of not using the tools we have to keep our codebase sane. i felt bad for him, but when we got up he thanked me and assured me that we were playing the same game. the others are beginning to work in a more disciplined manner, which makes me feel successful. on a similar note, i had a lot of dealings with imperieux today and things between us are fine, so i'm glad and fortunate that yesterday's unpleasantness didn't stick.

megaman told me that he had no issues with the holidays i've been planning, but that he finds it really weird that i'm so pedantic about logging my hours that i know precisely how many over or under i am. on the one hand, it would be easier to do as he says and just log eight hours a day regardless, but on the other... i feel like my knowledge gives me a certain amount of leverage when asking for a day off here and there and it's good that my information ocd is served :)

kickboxing tonight was good, but my arms still felt heavy and my punches mostly sucked. i worked really hard, though, and i definitely had fun!

it's now past bedtime for those of us who have to be up super early to get on a bus, and i've still got to pack. but it doesn't really matter. i can sleep on the bus :D