6 May 1999: Rusty License Plate

Thursday, 6 May 1999:

Rusty License Plate

Well, hopefully all of my readers are coming through my home page, and hopefully you've been redirected here, to Spies. I finally got tired of Fullfeed dragging their feet to set up my forwarding pointers, so I decided to set up my own pointers for some key files using .htaccess and start using Spies as my base. I just didn't want to wait any longer.

Unfortunately, .htaccess seems to require that I set up one forwarding pointer for every file I want to redirect, which is obviously a big pain in the ass. And apparently Fullfeed isn't running Apache as their Web server, since it seems to have some nice extensions to make .htaccess a little more useful, but they don't work. Sigh. So it will be a bumpy ride.

If anyone has any better suggestions, let me know...

Yesterday I drove up to my boss JP's house after work, and he helped me get my old license plate off my car, and put a new one on. The screws for my old plate were completely rusted and as JP put it were "one with the metal" of the mounting piece. We managed to snap one screw off, and we drilled through the other to the point that we removed it. Then we drilled some new holes in the mounting device and screwed my new plate on. We also examined the front of my car and found a mounting spot for my front plate, if I can get the right screws to use on it. Cool!

I also got to see JP's house. It's very cool! It's a small 3-bedroom deal, and would be pretty much exactly what I'd want in a house. He's done a great job landscaping it and fixing up the interior and exterior. And best of all he's got this cool space behind the house which he could landscape or build a new room into or whatever. I'd been worried that it would be impossible to find a house I could live in at a price I could afford out here, but this gives me hope. It's in a nice neighborhood, too.

After that task, I went to Subrata's where we played a 6-person Settlers game, using the Seafarers expansion and laying out the tiles randomly. We ended up with one large, windy island (with a big lake in the middle) and two much smaller islands. Everyone started on the big island, but only I positioned myself to cross to the smaller islands, which turned out to be a good move as the resources there counterbalanced my starting resources perfectly. It was a very close game, with five people in the running at the end, but I managed to pull it off and won the game in the end (with Subrata close behind me). Woo-hoo!

Oh, and I also called up Mayfair Games and ordered the Cheops expansion, which is only ten bucks, so how bad can it be? I have scant idea what it involves, but I'll be curious to find out.

I had kind of hoped to play Bridge tonight, but I suspect everyone else was busy, so I came home and watched a couple of Homicide episodes (including an excellent one with a great scene between Lewis and Kellerman, really a defining moment for their relationship), did some laundry, petted the cats (I bought them some cat grass, too), and did the aforementioned move to Spies. Also paid some bills and balanced my checkbook. A productive evening!

Kept working on alpha testing at work, and learned that I'll be interviewing a candidate tomorrow. Two months on the job and I'm already doing an interview! Okay, to be fair I'm one of quite a few people who will be seeing him over the course of the day, but still. Nervous? Sure. It's a big responsibility.

I'm starting to wonder how I'm doing in my job. Yeah, I always wonder this, but I've been here long enough to wonder if people think I'm doing well, not doing as well as they'd hoped, or feel it's too soon to tell. I should probably ask a few folks, although obviously that's a big step. What if they say something I don't want to hear? Not that I have any good reason to believe they would... but it's always a fear.

I'm feeling that I need to build some assertiveness at work (okay, not just at work, but let's put that aside for today). I see people going around to each other and saying, "Hey, how does this work?" "Why does this do this?" "We ought to do this this way instead; the other way doesn't make any sense." And I feel that I spend a lot of time, thought and energy trying to couch similar concepts in more delicate wording. "So when I do this, and then this, it does this. Is that right?" "Do we really want it to do that? I think that maybe..." And so forth.

This is one element of something about myself that bugs me. I often use words like "probably" to lessen the impact of what I say ("It should probably work this way..."). Content-wise, it's an empty word. Gah.

On the other hand, I felt like I got a lot of mileage at my last job by being very diplomatic and tactful (I got occasional comments to that effect, for instance). So I wonder if I'm being needlessly concerned. Or if it's something that served me well then but won't serve me as well now. I dunno.

But beyond just wordplay, I feel that I need to adjust my attitude, and speak my mind a little more. I'm finding that in many places in my new job that that will serve me well. Why don't I just do it? Fear of foot-in-mouth syndrome, basically.

Well. At least I've recognized the problem. If it is a problem.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)