it sure seems like an awful waste of space.

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20 july 1997

10:47 a.m.

Dear diary, My last day at work isn't exactly what I hoped it would be. There was a decent amount of coworker grief, thankfully, and a great deal of validation as far as my own valuation of my contributions was concerned. I was never so petty as to make myself totally invaluable and irreplaceable, but I think I was pretty damn close regardless. But, as my boss made clear, my "last day at work" was -- despite any sentimentality -- a day at work. Fine. But did I get to moderate a game of Blackjack? Did I get sit in the garden and encourage someone to explain why he doesn't think he's "normal"? Did I get to re-count the shoelaces in inventory to make sure there was an even number? Nope. I got to stick copyholders on computer monitors. What's that? Seven computers and only four flimy plastic arm-and-clip gizmos? Well, I better go to each office and find out which ones think they really need one. I was interviewing people to determine who should be awarded $3 pieces of crap being handed down like they were bars of gold. After a rigorous selection process, I narrowed the number of candidates down to four, and went computer to computer to bestow the honors. The real winner was upstairs in Crisis. They had one of those Radius Pivot monitors, that can flip from being legal-size tall to legal-size wide. The clerk insisted there must be some crucial geometrical formula that could help me determine where to could mount the copyholder so that it could work in either position. I had to scotch tape it on and actually turn the monitor to demonstrate why it was impossible. Did I mention these people all have, at the very least, Bachelor's degrees? Not a moment too soon, I affixed my last square of double-sided foam-padded adhesive. Leaving my cake (Safeway bakery special) for whoever might be hungry during the night shift, I waved at anyone who was looking and walked out. And that was that. From three jobs, to two, to one, and now, no job at all. Friday wasn't all bad. Derek and I went to see "Contact." Since I'd gone in having heard absolutely nothing but the most gushing praise, I was -- as usual -- looking to somehow dislike it. It's invoking of Carl Sagan's name pushed my expectations pretty high. I did find things to dislike. It was definitely a Zemeckis venture, with the occassional special effects excess (the Weekly was right about the massive crowd scenes -- they got old quick) and the undeniably Gump-esque closing title music. Matthew McConaughey was wrongfully and painfully miscast. And some of the sweeping soliloquys were almost too much. But it still impressed me. On a serious level, the message and questions the movie meant to pose were effectively conveyed. On a purely eye-candy level, "Contact" was a mind-blower. For a two-hour-plus picture, it was timed well enough so you wouldn't notice. And for a movie trying to do the impossible -- effectively and evenly addressing the perennial conflict between science and religion -- "Contact" managed to do a decent job with only a few glaring stumbles into cliche. A lot of why "Contact" worked was Jodie Foster. While her filmography has been a mixed-bag for me, in "Contact" she was definitely on. Despite the unfathomable burdens her character had to carry, and the fine line between drama and melodrama imposed by the movie's scope, she managed a very believable performance. "Contact" was especially refreshing after the recent onslaught of slapstick alien movies -- Independence Day, The Fifth Element, Men in Black, and any other flick where the aliens are cute or evil or both) -- that hardly qualify as "science fiction." Yes, there were eye-boggling (and no doubt expensive) special effects. There was, in the end, an alien. But instead of leaving the movie with the same simple, shallow glee as one would have after a really great fireworks show, people leave "Contact" with a full brain and something meaty to chew on. Over a month has passed since our relationship made its latest and long overdue (in my opinion) major step forward. I think I can safely say we're now in the midst of the unavoidable -- but ultimately enjoyable -- "like bunnies" phase. At one point, I didn't set foot in my own place for nearly a week. We're honestly and seriously trying to be moderate about everything. Since I won't so much as leave a sweater at his apartment, I don't think there's any danger of either of us losing ourselves in what is, frankly, very easy to get lost in. Whether or not anything happens, we agreed that no one would spend the night anywhere more than a couple of times a week -- a good idea since Derek's been late to work a few times now. We also agreed to say something if either of us felt things were going too much one way instead of another (a concern that was, ironically, brought up by him first). On the other hand, we both definitely agree we're more "retarded for eachother" (read: happy and in love) than ever. I once joked that the reason why I've stuck with him all this time is because no guy I ever dated made me wait so long. He said he was nervous that when the time finally came, I'd be disappointed. If the number of late-night runs to 7-11 we've made since are any indication (I guess not buying a "family pack" is another way to pace ourselves), I'm not disappointed at all. I feel a Geek Moment coming on. Bear with me. In an attempt to attain that seemingly impossible goal of having a Microsoft-free computer, I've been aquainting myself with BBEdit, the program referred to in countless trade magazines as the "weapon of choice" for HTML-crazed Mac heads. I've always coded by hand. For a while now, I've been using Microsoft Word 5.1 to do my HTML work (thank god I never "upgraded" to the 6.0 monstrosity); not that it was especially suited to HTML, but because it was fairly quick and less buggy than Apple's Simpletext (the Mac equivalent of Notepad). Frankly, any text editor would've worked fine. I thought BBEdit was just Simpletext on steroids, but I decided to try it out anyway. It was, to say the least, different. And the first time I fired it up, I hated it. With all the toolbars running, there were a million buttons on my screen. It used phrases like "Twiddle" and "Balance" as standard commands. And when I ran one of my pages through its HTML checker, it found 18 errors in my diary entry template alone. But I forced myself to use it. And its little quirks slowly started making sense. The first thing I got over was the code checker. Though it first struck me as being ridiculously picky, after I took the time to fix the little things it found, I realized I'd be just as picky if I'd been watching for certain things in the first place (missing closing tags, particularly). Then I began to adore its automatic, tasteful coloring of all HTML coding, helping me find a link at a glance and meanwhile making it easier for me to review a long block of text without stumbling over the mixed-in tags. I experimented with its niftier features, like formatting macros, site indexing and hierarchial formatting. While I'm still weeks away from being able to use any of them effectively (in fact, hitting the wrong buttons mangled the first attempt at this entry beyond repair), it was comforting to know they were available. Finally, I took a peek at the memory breakdown, and found it often consumed less than 1,024k of RAM. With Netscape demanding ten times that these days, I was sold immediately. So, this is my first Microsoft-free entry. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it feels like an important milestone in my geekly aspirations. Derek just called. I talked him into going to the "Friends of the Library" book sale at McKinley High. It's depressing. I haven't sat down and read a book for what seems like years now. The last pages of fiction I've touched are the first three chapters of "The Late Shift," and the first few pages of "A Confederacy of Dunces." Nevertheless, I still go to these book sales, almost as a tribute to the rabid reader I once was. Compared to bookstores, at least, I'm less likely to get in trouble if I suddenly get an urge to buy an entire shelf of piano fake books (don't ask). Hardcovers are as cheap as 50 cents, paperbacks a quarter. Come to think of it, I may have a lot of free time on my hands in the coming weeks.