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April 14, 2000 |
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No, you're not seeing things. What was previously the April 13 entry has
been amended to April 12. It's just that I got the dates messed up, so
bear with me. Days seem to be running together these days and I'm starting
to have a little bit of a tough time separating them. Not a entirely a bad
thing really, it means that I'm busy, which can be interpreted as either
good or bad. In this case it is a little of both.
You'll probably also notice that I don't do my entries on the actual dates.
I'm not sure what is proper thing to do for online journals, but since this
one is mine (mine! mine!), you'll have to deal with it in my
terms. I normally update a couple of days behind. I'm not sure why I do
it this way, but I do. Maybe that will change in time; who knows? However,
until I get my life in better working order this is the way it will have to
say.
Stayed up late last night doing some stuff for work. I'm not talking run-of-the-mill late like 8pm, I'm talking 3am or so. I basically had to so some funky stuff that would've required for people to not be doing much of anything at the time; I figured that in the middle of the night was probably the best time. Of course, this has a nasty habit of backfiring on you, since I found that I could not get this task done, and the person who I might ask for some assistance would not get in until morning. [Sigh] These are the kinds of things I live for. That's okay really since I would be up anyway.
Okay, it is also time for me to complaing about the lighting system in our (my company's) buildings. I know may sound petty but here it is. Our offices are equipped with fluorescent lighting in each of our offices. However, in the interest of saving power, the lights are set to turn off at certain times. The times vary from day to day, and the always flash five minutes before turning off to warn you. The end result is that you're sitting in your office knowing that anytime you could be plunged into complete darkness, save the soft glow from your monitors. You can turn them back on, but you have to walk down the hall to this override switch and to turn them back on. You would imagine that somewhow they could get the perfectly good light switch that sits on your wall to accomplish the same thing, but they don't. Now this may all seem a bit petty to you, and ordinarily I would agree. However, there have been instances where I simply could not leave my office, so I'm left with having to work in the dark. I feel like a mushroom.
I got relatively little sleep last night, more so than the previous Friday's two hours, but little sleep nevertheless. I think I'm working on four hours today. I has lunch plans with Cris, Rick, Trudy, and Jim. I knew about it, so I made it in to work on time. We had lunch at our default lunch place, Casa Vallarta. It was nice seeing them all, especially Cris, since we no longer work together; he's even left the company. We talked about some of the things we're working on and do what friends do. I've always had some sentimental ties to Cris, since he was the first program manager that I worked with on a project almost nine years ago. Life was so much simpler then.
I had plans with Pam tonight. The Seattle traffic is enough to drive most people insane. I'm either extremely even tempered or a psychopathic madman depending on who you ask. I don't enjoy the Seattle traffic, so we would not be meeting until about 7:30pm tonight. We had made plans to get Italian food at Cucina Cucina, and go to watch American Psycho. I arrived shortly after 7:30pm, which was good since I was expecting to get there about 8pm.
We sped to the Cucina Cucina in Redmond. The one thing I didn't really count on is there being a waiting line for a table. There was immediate seating on the bar and we managed to get a seats right by the kitchen overlooking the wood oven, which Pam found pretty romantic. I suppose that I thought of it as seats near the bar which were alarmingly close to the kitchen and the front door, but that's just me. Far be it for me to ruin the moment for her. She made the observation that I was tired, which I was, but she also suggested that we skip the movie, to which I objected. We warned our waitress that we were trying to make a 9:30 movie, which she didn't seem worried about. I had the lasagna; she had the calzone. We shared the tiramisu for dessert. It was a nice meal.
The movie theater was around the corner, so there was negligible travel time. We got the tickets for American Psycho. The theater was pretty full so we elected to sit in the back row, well, that and because I wanted to be frisky.
The movie was a bust, perhaps it has some chance to be appreciated as a cult classic, but realistically it even lacks that kind of distinction. It is just plain bad. The characters lack distinction and seem to be largely unmotivated. To say that they were two dimensional would be a mixed compliment. Most characters including the protagonist (if you can call him that), lacked any kind of direction. The hero goes through halfhearted attempts at killing and the movie only makes dismal, token attempts to display angst or conflict. To its credit, it was told from the point of view of the "psycho", which certainly meant that it can take certain liberties on displaying truth versus his imagination. However, I suppose that there's still too much of a cynic in me that believes that there has to be a part of the characters that the audience has to identify with… someone we can either root for or against. This movie was surprisingly lacking.
This is very strange because I normally hesitate to criticize movies, but I suppose that in a strange way this movie has that distinction.
April 14, 2000