Time, The Lack Thereof

Is it me or is there just not enough time in a day to do everything you want to do?

Why can't I finish doing all I want to do in a day, in a day!?

Today for example, I wanted to:

• go return a wig at a Halloween costume place
• buy a shirt dress and a belt to go along
• buy drum mutes
  
• go to my drum lessons
• go eat ramen at this restaurant
• shop for groceries
  
• shop for non-groceries at Target
• clean my bathroom
• get ready for work stuff tomorrow

Instead, here's what I accomplished:

Well...now that I think about it, I did do everything on the above list.
However (yes there's always that unfortunate "however"), a bunch of new things cropped up:

• After coming home, I noticed I had a sinkful of dishes to be washed. And I knew that if I didn't wash them today, I probably won't wash them until another weekend rolls around and by that time, all the groceries I bought today would have gone bad. So I washed them.
• While taking out the groceries, I noticed, suddenly, that there was a HUGE spider next to a piece of paper towel on the kitchen counter. Yes, HUGE. As in as big as my thumb. If you think about it, that is pretty big for a normal household spider. It wasn't moving but I could tell that it was still alive, trying to fool me into THINKING that it was dead. But I wasn't about to be fooled--I picked up my right slipper and slammed it on it, before it had a chance to move. BAM! And just like that, it was dead. Only...now I had to dispose it. This part is actually more scary than it was alive because I had to actually pick it up--pick up the dead, squished, ugly, gross, spider--and put it in the trash can. For a second, I thought about waiting for someone to come over to my house and let them do it, but then decided against it. Afterall, it's probably more likely that I'll accidentally touch it while I'm making food or something if I don't get rid of it as soon as possible. So I mustered all the courage I had in me, used a plastic bag along with a paper towel, picked up the spider (what I was dreading the most was actually feeling the spider through whatever I was picking it up with...), and threw it into the trash. Needless to say, this took a good half an hour.
• Guru had sent me a few emails. As I mentioned, he's away currently, and will be returning to work in two weeks. We had some contact in the beginning of his absence (via email). But he hadn't replied me for awhile. So it was quite a pleasant surprise to receive emails from him. He was also kind enough to link me to pictures of his trip, which I took my time in enjoying.
• No shopping trip is ever complete without a post-shopping-trying-on of all the items bought. So I did that--put on my shirt dress and different accessories that I think goes with it--and strut around my room while watching Sex and the City.
• While watching Sex and the City, the most beautiful song came on. It was "Moon River" by Henry Mancini, I learned. And being the curious person that I am, I went on a search spree that went something like this (some of these happened concurrently): Google: Henry Mancini "two drifters" --> Download Moon River mp3 -->iTunes Music Store: Moon River --> Henry Mancini --> The Pink Panther --> Andy Williams --> Google: Moon River lyrics --> Wikipedia: Henry Mancini --> Andy Williams

...
And the time currently reads: 1:35am

X_X

I still have to take a shower. :

Inattention

Have you ever looked into your backpack, having your eye on a pen, reached in, but grabbed a pencil instead?

That was me this morning.

I don't understand how it happens. I had my eye on it. I intended to grab that specific pen. I suppose I didn't keep my eye on it at the last moment--i.e. the moment I reached for it with my fingers. Surprising just what a little inattention can do...

An Unfortunate World of Choices

I always hear people say "girls are so complicated". While I don't agree with the statement completely, I will say this: Everything TO DO with girls is!!!

For most guys, finding a pair of pants that look good is pretty much a two-step process:

1. Find the color
2. Find the size (and sizes have only 2 numbers--length and waist)
   

And if both of these work out, they have their pants!
In terms of different fits, there's only one--relaxed, straight-legged (to sum it up). Yea yea, there are skinny jeans for guys as well, but those don't count. The PREDOMINANT kind is the loose-fitting kind. (We're not talking about the metrosexual here--just the average guy.)

On the flip side, for girls, it is a much more complicated process:

1. Find the color
2. Find the fit (e.g. for jeans, this could be: skinny, straight leg, flare leg, boot leg, wide leg, and boyfriend--the loose-fitting guys jeans I was talking about earlier, but made for girls)
   
3. Find the size
   
4. Repeat 1-3 if necessary
   

Note that there are 3 types of womens pants sizing:

• 1,3,5,7,...
• 0,2,4,6,...
• 24, 26, 28, 30,...

This alone makes step 4 necessary--because with so many different sizing options, you HAVE TO try them on first.

At first glance, it's only one more steps than for guys. But with the added step, the complexity increases by a lot. Imagine there are 3 different colors for a type of guys pants and 10 different sizes (for simplicity sake). That's 3 x 10=30 combinations.

Now imagine there are 3 different colors for a type of girls pants and 4 different fits and 10 different sizes. That's 3 x 4 x 10 = 120 combinations!!

No wonder girls spend so much time at the mall! It's a wonder how they can pick anything out at all! With that in mind, now add clothes, shoes, and accessories...

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Too many choices!!!

Let's look at this issue more closely. For men, "business casual" boils down to:

1. button down shirt (short or long sleeve)
2. pants
3. dress/nice shoes

To make mens' life easier, their shirts all come pre-packaged in nice little rectangular plastic bags with the size (collar size and shirt size) written on there. There is no scrambling racks, searching through every tag to find the right size (but they do potentially have to dig through the pile of packaged shirts). For men, all they have to do is look for the right color and the right size--and BOOM! They're done. There's no such thing as "trying on".

Men's pants we've already discussed. Consensus: pretty straightforward.

Dress shoes? Well, I guess there's a pretty wide range of dress shoes for men, but in no way shape or form do the variety in terms of shapes even begin to compare with that of womens dress shoes.

Now let's take a look at women's "business causal". This could mean a number of things:

1. button down shirt, pants
2. tank top, cardigan, pants
3. button down shirt, skirt
4. dress

Each number consists of hundreds of different styles, materials, colors, fits. I don't want to go into the details, but basically, if you're a girl and you want to find something that fits you well, you're out of luck!

Here are just a few examples:







For example, it took me 3 WEEKENDS to find a pair of dress shoes! I am not even kidding--3 weekends!

What the hell took me so long?

Well, first, I couldn't decide what kind of shoes I wanted. Should I get high heels? platforms? 1 inch? 2 inches? no heels? black? tan? red? oxfords? mary janes? pumps? loafers? boots? leather? suede? canvas? (You'd be surprised at how many kinds of women's shoes pass for "business casual").

It took me literally hours to finally decide that I wanted a pair of black shoes with no heels.
Yay, the hard part's over, says you.
Nope.

After walking around for a bit, I realized this: most women's shoes with no heels look like men's shoes and are ugly. (Not saying men's shoes are ugly though.) I'm not kidding. It's really hard to come by a feminine looking pair of shoes when you're in the "little-to-no-heel-comfortable" category--the category I was in.

Here's where the trying-on actually happens. After trying on a bunch of different pairs, I decide on a pair--"hmm, this pair is comfortable and looks good." Well, I was wrong about the "comfortable" part on 2 occassions. For some reason, every time I buy a pair of shoes, and wear them at home around the house for a bit, they either (for whatever strange reason) don't fit anymore, or become insanely umcomfortable. X_X

Well, if you don't succeed, try try again, the saying goes. So today, I was back at the mall again, trying to find a pair of shoes that meet my requirements. And I'm happy to report that I (think I) finally found a pair of shoes that I love and don't think I'll return!!

I found a pair of Franco Sarto patent leather flats (with a slight heel)--comfortable, professional, and looks great! :)

That said, my point is still, however, that there are way too many choices out there for women in terms of clothes, shoes and accessories and that can definitely be a bad thing in terms of efficiency!

The Task

Hm...so far I've only blogged about work-related things...

Maybe this'll become a theme...a work blog.

Oo...

*ponders*

Anyway, something rather "interesting" happened to me yesterday. I say "interesting" because I'm not sure as to how I should feel with respect to this situation.

So, in a nutshell, my manager basically told me to take on this role out of the blue. It has nothing to do with what I've been working on, it's for a project that's going downhill, and it'll probably take up most of my time so I most likely won't be able to work on what I have been working on (and enjoy working on). Basically, one of the projects that's managed by one of the members on my team is going on for way longer than the proposed budget can hope to support. And since the resources (read: $$) are all used up, he made the decision to eliminate one of the contractors and replace that person with someone internal.

My initial reaction was pretty much "omg I can't believe my manager is being so unreasonable, doesn't he know I already have a lot on my plate?" and "I don't think I know enough to take on this role, or do I want to because I know nothing about the project". However, after talking to a few co-workers, I'm starting to think my resentment might be a little biased. Afterall, it is within reason to ask this of someone in the corporate workplace, right?

Here are the possible reason why I reacted like that:

1. Ever since I joined the team this summer, I've been hearing not-so-great things about him
2. There has been a few times prior to this case where I felt he was being rude/unreasonable/unfair*
3. Guru complains about him
4. Guru spoils me by teaching me things and making me enjoy work :D

To sum it up, I basically didn't like my manager from the beginning. Why? Because the manager that I worked with last summer (the awesome one) is no longer in the company.

I feel like if he were still here, and he asked me to do something like this, I would probably not complain at all. Because I know he's reasonable, and therefore probably wouldn't even have asked me to take this role in the first place.

--------------------

*Situations that illustrate his rudeness/unreasonability/unfairness:

• My manager demanded (or rather "insistently asked") me to give him my cell phone number so that he can reach me on the fly when he himself cannot be reached by any means. (I didn't give it to him.)
• My manager wouldn't let me have his cubicle so that I could be closer to the rest of my team when he himself isn't even there for weeks at a time. (He works remotely and is supposed to commute to my site every other week.)
• My manager forfeited my chance of ever being in the same cubicle as the rest of my team when he let another newly joined member of the team take a recently evacuated cubicle, a spot which I had asked for his permission prior to the new member joining the team.

Punctuality

I hate rush hour traffic. So it's actually a good thing that I don't get to work as early as some of my co-workers because if I leave my apartment at an earlier time, I'll still get to work at the same time because of it.

So, my company is NW of where I live and there are two ways that I usually switch between:

• the more local way, and
• the freeway

Both are basically the same distance and both first go north, then west. Actually, there's not much difference between the two routes now that I think about it. They both take 20 minutes. And there's traffic on both. (The freeway's probably slightly longer than the local route with slightly less traffic.)

This morning, I decided to take the local route. Since I'm still trying to explore my routes and find a quicker way, I always time how long it takes me to get to work. So this morning, I was doing well on time for about half the way but then, when I got on the main road that my company is on (the west-going part), the traffic got really, really bad (think first scene in Office Space). 

As soon as I switched to a lane that was moving, it stopped moving! This happened a few times.  And then there are times where I would see the light turn green and yet the car in front of me wouldn't move. 

So friggin frustrating.

Finally, I had enough. I decided to take a detour--a side road that is parallel to the main road, but that bypasses the traffic. But I forgot that after a certain point, the section of roads to the right of the main road gets very tangly and twisty (before that part, they're all pretty much like a grid). So, I spent 5 minutes trying to get to the road that was parallel to the main road and guess where I ended up?

On the main road. Before the point where I had turned. x_x

What the hell? Now I'm definitely going to be late for my meeting.

So I puffed and scoffed and stayed in the slow moving endless line of cars until I FINALLY arrived at work.

The Guru

So, I've started my full time job ever since mid-July. And to be honest, I don't think I was exactly ready to work full-time yet. For one, a bunch of people I'm close to are still at school and I wish to be with them more than anything. Another reason is that I wasn't sure if I wanted to do what I was doing at work--mainly because, I didn't really know what I was doing AND, for awhile I really wasn't doing anything. And I hate admitting what I'm about to admit, but one of the reasons I took the job was because I had an awesome time in California last summer. Keyword: California. Of course, it was the people that made all the difference. So yes, part of that reason was because I enjoyed working with my co-workers. But, I'm going to say this (because it's something I learned)--NEVER go for a job BECAUSE of the people and not the job itself. The job should ALWAYS come first. Why? Because by now, pretty much ALL the people that I enjoyed working with are either leaving, or have already left.

Yea, you can say that I was pretty bummed to hear that my awesome manager from last summer has left the company when I joined (I am managed now by a not-so-awesome-but-I-guess-not-too-terrible-either manager). And it's not exactly encouraging when two weeks later, one of my closest co-workers/friends revealed to me that he, too, was also leaving the company.

HOWEVER, (and this is a big "however"--kind of like a plot twist), recently I've really been enjoying working. And I have to thank one person for this. We'll call him--(god I'm so bad with coming up with names)...

*5 minutes later*

We'll call him Guru (no he's not Indian). Guru joined the company about a year ago and has a tremendous amount of industry experience, not to mention technical expertise. He's kind of the "go-to" person on our team because he's incredibly sharp and quick at understanding the exact problem that is brought to him.

On top of everything he does, he has been meeting with me on a daily basis starting about 4 weeks ago. And under his guidance, I can say that I now understand much better what it is I'm doing, how what I'm doing fits into the needs of our team, the environment that our systems are on, how our system environment compares to that of other companies, etc.--basically, how everything fits together.

In addition to understanding things, I've also learned a lot technically. I won't go into the details* but I'll just say this--before, I hated it when people asked me what my job was and what I did. Because, it wasn't clear even to me what exactly I did, let alone explaining it to other people. I feel like I always gave some bullshit answer that others have told me. I mean, I obviously know what I did at work on a certain day, but how did that fit into the bigger picture? I didn't know. But now, I'm much less averse to it.

And not only that, Guru and I developed a relationship which makes work even more enjoyable for me. For one thing, we joke a lot and he calls me "boss" all the time because I always remind him what he's supposed to go over with me. Another thing that I like about him is that he always always always encourages me to ask questions. Sometimes, I might look like I have a question to ask him, but I might just be thinking, but he'll be like "ok what is it? what's the question?" I think this is how I'm able to learn so much in such a short amount of time.

Butttttttt, (and this is the part that I've been wanting to get to since the beginning of the post), he'll be gone for a month, starting tomorrow, due to personal reasons. :(

If I know for sure that a month is all he'll be away for, I'd be ok. The truth is, I don't know. I mean, that's what he tells everyone. But for all I know, he could just not come back at the end of the month. A person like him doesn't need to be in this company where everything (system environment-wise, see "*") is so screwed up. He can easily find another job elsewhere.

In fact, a question that I keep on wanting to ask him is "why are you still here?" He knows how messed up our environment is more than anyone else on my team, so why is he choosing to be here, instead of at a company where everything works efficiently and he could put his efforts to something else rather than trying to painstakingly fix our environment in little bits at a time? Sometimes I wonder why he even bothers to teach me, a newbie, so many things (yes I'm cynical like that). I mean, I love it and appreciate it greatly. But I can't help but wonder, "What's in it for you?" I suppose that he could just be very nice and want the best for me. But, I've been told multiple times that in a corporate world, every man is for himself. Once you get what you want from a place, you move on.

What it comes down to, I guess, is that if he leaves the company for good, I don't know if I'll be able to stand on my own. I don't want it to be like last summer again, where I was given little guidance and basically had little understanding of how everything worked. I mean, with the knowledge that I have now (even though it's a lot more than what I knew last summer), I don't think it's enough for me to--well, do my job. Obviously, I'll do what I'm told, but without enough understanding, I don't know if I can grow on my own (or stay stagnant).

Of course, I'm not afraid to take steps to ensure my career advancement. It's just that, without him, I think it'll be a lot harder.

--------------------

*Ok, I lied. Here are the details regarding my job and what I do. Basically, my job (so far) deals with the backend systems of a company--the "databases" that stores the company's data--namely how to efficiently utilize it to perform meaningful analysis on the data so as to ultimately help upper management and different divisions of the company to generate revenue.

"Databases" is in quotes because it's not exactly just databases--there's the source data (which is stored in different places, in different formats), and then it is extracted, transformed, and loaded into target data warehouses via ETL (extract transform load) softwares. Reporting tools then retrieves data from the data warehouse and perform analysis on it and generate reports.

In fact, I don't even think the above paragraph even begins to explain how complicated things can get. For one, there are usually three parallel environments--development, test, and production--which have the same systems installed on them. They are used by different projects. And there are a lot of connectivities that go on between the systems and the different layers in the data transfer process. There's always room for improvement in terms of making things more efficient. In fact, we have a project right now (one of the ones that I'm working on) that consists of making changes in the environment to make things go faster.

Actually, I still haven't gotten into the complexities yet. But I'll spare you (this post is getting too long). :)
If you're really curious, send me an IM or call and I'll tell you more.

The Dan We Never Knew

three words:
What. The. F***?

The Danger of Assumptions

Yesterday, something very horrible happened to my computer. It was put on standby before I went to sleep and was plugged into the outlet for the entire night. In the morning, when I went to do my morning routine of checking my email, it wouldn't turn on.

The first thing I noticed--it had shut off from being in standby mode. Odd, though not too unlikely. I pressed the power button. Nothing. I pressed it again--still nothing. Hm...ok, well THIS has NEVER happened before. I went on to press the power button a few more times, but to no avail.

Oh no. I thought to myself. My computer finally got tired of me keeping it on all the time and has decided to strike back. It finally grew wary of my constant demands... Uh oh, when was the last time I backed up? Then I remembered that for some random reason, I decided to back up my work stuff the night before. You go girl H! But then I remembered something else--CRAP! I haven't backed up my pictures for awhile. Oh. my. god. I think I just lost two months worth of pictures, except for the low-res ones that were uploaded onto Faceook. x_X

Now, I know you're probably thinking "there are so many worse things that could have happened". Yes, I know, I could have lost all of my work documents, I could have not backed up any of my pictures, etc. etc. That's true. But if anyone's a picture taker/lover, that person's me. And while it's not the worst thing in the world, it f***in' sucks to have two months worth of pictures vanish like that.

I then called a few people, hopeful that my pictures can still be salvaged. But most of what I got was "are you sure it's not out of batteries? why don't you plug it in?" Um, it was plugged in for the whole night, how could it be out of batteries? I decided that my best bet is probably to let one of my coworkers know and see what the procedure is for turning in a dead laptop. So I emailed one. Great. Now I won't be able to work until I get another laptop. And who knows when that'll be. (Yes, I use my work laptop as my personal laptop but that's only bc I've been waiting for the upgrade from Apple for their MacBooks.)

The day went on, and I had decided to bring my laptop to my friend's apartment to see if he had any ideas. "Where is your power adapter? Are you sure it was plugged in?" Was the first thing he asked me. "Yea, I know the battery's not dead bc it was plugged in for the entire night." I replied. "Well, let's just plug it in and see what happens, " he persisted. "Ok," I sighed. Afterall, it couldn't hurt.

So he plugged the laptop in and pressed the power button and...
the green light came on! It's turning on!

...
=.=

Wow. I was speechless. I felt sooooo stupid! How could I have not realized that instead of my laptop having the problem, that the outlet could have been the faulty one?* I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I didn't understand how I could just assume that my laptop crapped out and refuse to try methods that people have been suggesting to me all day.

Ok, lessons learned:

• Stop assuming things and being boxed in by those assumptions!
• Whenever laptops don't turn on, check the POWER first.

*It turns out that it was neither the outlet nor the laptop's fault. There's a switch in my room that's rigged to a pair of outlets. And I had connected one of the outlets to the floor lamp and the other to a surge protector which connects my laptop and laptop-related equipment. When I had gone to sleep the night before, I turned the switch off--forgetting that it would also cut the connection to my laptop. x_x

New Beginnings

Alas, my efforts to keep my last blog alive have...how should I say this? Failed.

I probably should have seen it coming... So on the one hand, I wanted as many people to know about it/read it/leave comments as possible. On the other, I didn't want too many people to know about some of the things I blogged about. Result? I ran out of things to say.

Finally, after four months of inactivity (FIVE!!), I said to myself, "Time for a new blog."

This blog, unlike my last one, is intended for a smaller audience. I do not wish this blog to be advertised, so if I give you the link to my blog, PLEASE DON'T PLACE A LINK ON YOUR SITE. I repeat, DO NOT LINK TO MY BLOG ON YOUR SITE OR FOR THAT MATTER, ON AIM OR ANY OTHER PUBLIC PLACE WHERE OTHERS MIGHT SEE IT. (You can bookmark it or subscribe to it though. :D) That said, I still would like comments. So, pleeeeeeease comment.