Breaking the Inertia – Young Roman vs. Old Man Roman

During my horribly painful run Sunday, I pondered what my 15-year-old cross-country-running self (hereafter, Young Roman) would have thought. Back in those days, I could literally run a mile without breaking a sweat. It was easily the best shape of my life. Been there, done that, still got the T-shirt (one of Alli & Newey’s favorites – though I’m not sure what you call it without the sleeves – an I-shirt?). Could run a 5k in somewhere around 24-25 minutes, depending on the terrain. I’m quite sure I would have scoffed at 25-year-old Roman’s struggle to bring 7.4k home in almost exactly 60 minutes.

But, seeing as it was actually ten years ago now (friggin’ unbelievable), I reflected upon what else has changed since then. It’s true, I am no longer even remotely in shape – that’s one thing I think Young Roman will always have on me. But a lot can happen in 10 years. Warning, Memory Lane is up ahead.

I hooked the girl Young Roman nearly gave up on. And now she is my wife.

I completed high school, scooped up a BSME @ UC (despite Chemistry, Budweiser, Ghia, and Diff EQ’s best efforts) and somehow snuck into my current job.

I became a proud Hoonie, and then a member of the 2429. These guys are permanently woven into my life.

I parlayed a work assignment in the middle of a cornfield into a year-long Japan assignment, which I then parlayed into an assignment back where we belong – near the ‘Nati. I’m still not entirely sure how I pulled that off.

I have admittedly become a pretty big nerd about business & finance.

I can speak pretty bad Japanese, but it typically gets the job done.

I wrote an awful lot of pretty awful stuff for this site, and have pretty much abandoned it in the last year and change.

I have made pretty good friends who I expect to stay in touch with on at least three other continents (Europe, Australia, Asia) – can you say Couch Surfing?!

I very nearly started a business with a high school friend, only to back out at the last minute because I lost my job in SE Ohio (fortunately, after that, I got hired by my current employer). I still sort of regret not being able to do this.

I have bought a house and we’re fixing to trade it in for a “forever home”

I have been through three cars (Intrepid, Big New Yorker, Tow-rass), and drove a fourth one from the passenger’s seat in Japan. Expect number five around the end of June.

My mom got divorced and remarried.

Alli & I went through a heart-wrenching six months in late 2007, but I have become closer to Allison’s family as a result. I am also quite grateful to my employer for their support during that whole ordeal.

I have seen dozens of friends get married/have children/become actual adults. And it doesn’t make me sad for them. Whoa.

I have been (in no order):

To Philmont (in NM) for a two-week camping trek

To London, England for a week of legal, underaged debauchery

To Las Vegas for my 21st birthday AND New Year’s

To Maui for my honeymoon… along with family and friends

To the NAIAS in Detroit during the last really decent year (Feb 2008)

To Washington D.C. on a road trip with Joey-Z

To Toronto, Asheville, NC; and Starkville, MS on road trips with my lovely wife.

To the top of Mt. Fuji

To the Snow Festival in Sapporo, Japan

Alright, that’s enough. Did I miss anything big? I was really amazed at how much can happen in ten years. It may be a poor excuse for a post, but anything to break the inertia.

Hope everyone is doing well back home. Enjoy your damned BBQs and cheap beer while I continue to eat scraps of beef, rice and whole-fish-on-sticks… and drink 600-800 yen (100yen=about $1USD) beer.

Hope to see you all again in late June/early July!

Does All That Logging Make Me A Lumberjack?

Ladies and Gentlemen, in the interests of not being entirely outdone by my compatriot, I present you with an utterly inferior and vastly more useless post than the preceding three. 

That said, please don’t underestimate the gravity of this post. I am, Hoonie faithful, humbly trying to protect the souls of our entire Hoonie cult following from Big Brother.

I’ll give that a second to sink in. 

I have discovered the way in which Big Brother will one day overtake our world. At work, of course, I expect my internet usage to be monitored and my outgoing email attachments to be scrutinized. The Jocular Man has recently begun filtering certain emails by subject and sending automatic cc’s to the two layers of management above me.

I have a dream, though entirely unrelated to Dr. MLK’s, that our company president receives dozens of cc’s from his underling executives, telling their wives not to wait up. It’s all that keeps me going sometimes.

Anyway, back on topic… I have discovered the way in which the devil shall soon collect our souls. Or Ray Bradbury will burn our books. Or some Board of Shadowy Figures will do Big Important Evil Deeds. Or whatever your favorite conspiracy is. 

And I believe that sci-fi Day of Reckoning is coming fast. 

How will it happen, you ask? Someone will make a simple offer that will irrevocably make everyone’s life easier. They will offer to replace every single one of my fucking logins with biometrics. A quick thumb-scan and you’ve got access to everything.

They will steal my life, soul, and the Jocular Automaking benefits that my soon-to-be spouse so longingly covets. They will pillage my home and rape my unborn children. And I will thank them profusely for it. 

I have twelve logins that relate directly to everyday tasks at my job. Twelve, Bob. I seriously can’t make this shit up. I have four logins and two different packaging utilities that I must use to transfer a single file from our design center to the computer sitting on my desk. And I have to cheat the file through a server transfer. I’m waiting for the day they’ll give me the two suitcases and the hexadecimal nuke passkeys in those little breakable vials. I think that would be simpler, honestly.

I have three different logins for three different types of computer system (my main computer, special computer, and any other computer). I’ve got THREE FUCKING SPAMFILTER UTILITIES at work. They all have different logins and randomly generated passwords that are at least twelve characters long. I have at least two additional logins I can think of offhand for other special programs I use approximately once a month. 

I’ve got logins for my bank accounts (two), my mortgages (two), my utilities (two), my retirement plans (two), my credit cards (three), my master’s program (two – one for billing/grades and one for registration), my frequent flier programs (two), my Marriott Points account (my precioussss), and my student loans. I’ve even got two different logins to get my W-2s (try using a fucking login once per year) and my pay stubs! My expense reports and purchase orders require me to RE-enter my login information (same as the pay stubs one, however).

I’ve got logins for an indeterminable number of forums, logins for Facebook, LinkedIn, AIM, Yahoo!, and three other email addresses. I can access my work email in two ways: using my work PC and usual login, or from any other computer using a DIFFERENT LOGIN AND RANDOMLY GENERATED PASSWORD. I’ve even got to log in to post this drivel!

And it would all be okay if I could change all of my logins to the same name and all of my passwords to the same eight-character-with-a-special-character-and-a-number string. 

Except many of my passwords have to be rotated. I have to use ten different passwords before I can repeat, and I have to remake the passwords every three months. 

But here is the true sign of the apocalypse, my friends.

I shit you not, I have an Excel spreadsheet on my desktop at work called “Passwords”. It is password protected. I pray every night that Ray Bradbury will never hack it.

One Day at a Time

This phrase has become my new personal motto (at least for this month). And here it has many meanings – the only way to get back to writing here is one day at a time. It also describes the way Alli and I are making our way through the “real world”. No prodigious leaps forward in progress, just day-by-day developments. I’ve decided this one will be a news bulletin of sorts just to bring everyone up to speed on recent events. I would like to get back to weekly updates, but we all know how that’s gone in the past (see: 2006).

Perhaps most significant is that about a month ago I proposed to Alli and tricked her into an engagement (Hint: show women pretty shiny things and they don’t know what they’re agreeing to). It was a very romantic affair; there was lots of sweat, a few smiles, and one dangerous flying Frisbee. Anyway, we’re both pretty excited about this getting married thing, primarily because we’re going to do it this February in Maui. The ceremony is just sort of one of those things on the side – like a timeshare presentation that gets in the way of an otherwise satisfactory vacation. Movingrightalong…

Next big item – in July we’re headed to Japan. There are several things that will happen in between. First: I’m taking the JLPT Level 4 in December. I’ll start receiving tutoring around January, with Alli starting soon after we get back from Maui (the lessons are a spousal benefit only). I’m also taking an online course for written Technical Japanese. Should be fun – we get to live like nomadic college students again!

I’m just starting a new project at the Jocular Automaking Pecuniary Sanctuary, and I’m pretty excited about that – I get to start earlier in the project than the last two I’ve worked on, and I’ll probably stay with it when we head to the motherland in July.

The house is still standing, somehow… we’re slowly adapting to this homeowner thing, although I think we’ll get a real good workout here in a few weeks – the trees around here sure look like they have a lot of leaves on them.

Just a short one to get rolling. I’ve got a long-winded anecdote about Detroit in the Wings (get it, Wings?); I’m just waiting to see the exciting conclusion this week.

I’ll keep you posted (unless Cass needs more road).

Manufactured Words and Shattered Worldviews

Lately, it seems I’ve become something of an alcoholic. I actually really enjoy going out to bars by myself. Whether I see folks there I’ve met or not, I always manage to have a good time. I know a couple places to find free pool, a couple really cool places that don’t have free pool, and I know there are some pretty good drink specials nearly every night out here in the Land of Corn.

Now I’m a pretty well-traveled guy. I can fit roughly into any crowd: rednecks, rockers,  CLASSIC rockers, uppity/edumacated folks, bikers, and/or “urban folks” (this is my code word for people who like rap/hip-hop and favor baggy clothing). Occasionally some of these groups of people will overlap – for instance, last Sunday I saw a guy walk into the bar with a biker shirt & a ponytail. He made a beeline for the jukebox and I thought to myself, “Play some SKEEE-naaard!” fully expecting to hear “Freebird” pour forth in all of its symphonic glory. What I got was “That Smell.” Heh.

Anyway, we got to talking and then shooting pool, and it became clear very quickly that this guy was a card-carrying, bonafide redneck. Big truck, big hunter, drunk at 5 pm, big shit-talker, et al. Real nice guy, just real redneck.

But last night (Monday the 16^th of October, 2006 (A.D.), for posterity’s sake) I bore witness to something that still has me scratching my head. I decided, on a whim, to stop into the Vault for a little bit and shoot a few racks of free pool. There was a new bartender in um… bartendance… who I had never met. He introduced himself as Avery. And he was black, which, while being a rather common thing to see in Cincy, is not so common around here.

It was early and the jukebox had a bunch of free plays on it. He told me and this girl at the bar to go pick something out, and I declined—told him to play anything; I really ain’t that choosy. She gave him this evil eye I’ve seen many’a time, one that says: go pick your own damn music.

So that’s what Avery did. The first song out of the box was the “Rollin’” remix off of Limp Dill-znik’s Chocolate Starfish album. Sorta hippy-hoppish. No earth-shattering surprise there. It followed up with some Stone Temple Pilots. Nice touch, I thought.

Shortly thereafter a nice guy named Nolan (who had recently turned 21) strolls in. He is about as redneck as any guy I’ve experienced here in the Corn: Big ol’ boy, got the slow-talking, drawlin’ accent, camo hat and coat, a big ol’ truck, and he immediately launches into local news about so-and-so’s property that they done closed off to all hunters. He reaffirmed every single stereotype that I’ve ever considered redneck. He was fascinating to listen to.

This is where my brain sort of came unhinged, but I’ll do my best to explain what happened. Avery (who knew Nolan from childhood/high school) comes right back with: “Bullshit… he told me I could hunt up there any time I want, just three weeks ago.”

The conversation went on for a couple of hours, and I sat there morbidly engrossed. Avery is more of a fucking redneck than NOLAN!—he’s got coon huntin’ dogs (once nabbed a 40 lb. coon)… and he drives a big ol’ Dodge Ram (his vanity plate is 6 B BUCK)… and he once got it stuck trying to ramp/drive/swamp across the WABASH-FUCKING-RIVER (had to get four guys to push it out)!… and he hunts illegally (said he killed at least two deer every night last year during gun season—the bag limit is two for the year)… and he drinks (LEGENDARY amounts of whiskey, according to Nolan—several of Avery’s stories confirmed this)… and he wants to shoot the animals (five horses who are nothing more than skin and bones) of the renters who have trashed his property… and he’s going to Arkansas to hunt boar and bear next month (“I’ll get tags if I kill something”)… and he drives a semi truck nine months a year (he was pissed off because a friend wanted to borrow his truck to screw some chick in the cab—very classy)… and he… he… HE FUCKING FROG-GIGS!

No shit! I honestly couldn’t make all this up! Nolan was having trouble with the jukebox and Avery goes over, pushes him out of the way, and dials up DAVID ALLAN-FUCKING-COE.

Fucking Avery. He’s wrecked all of the prejudices I could previously hold exclusively against white-trash rednecks. I honestly thought those traits were unique to corn-fed-inbred types. But it turns out Avery’s got a “psycho ex-wife” (that seems to be a redneck requirement, too) who has a restraining order on him, just like every other redneck! Avery is now the Rosa Parks of the Stars and Bars (he’s got a Confederate flag sticker on his truck). Um, or something.

Other than ruining my world perceptions, though, it was great bartendance (I think I should patent that word). Good service, hysterical stories, and an all-’round memorable night.

An Impossible Mission?

An interesting thought occurred to me the other day. Having just watched Mission: Impossible III, my adrenaline was still pumping sluggishly through my system as I browsed through the shelves at Barnes & Noble.

Although I found the book I wanted quickly, much to my irritation, nature was calling. Which leads me to the question I pose here briefly today.

How does Ethan Hunt take a shit?

I mean, for everything else he does, he’s been ultra-trained in efficiency and accuracy. Speed, accuracy, agility, and stealth are his calling cards. These words make me think that Ethan Hunt is the one man in the world who could pull off this traditional scrawling on the wall:

“Any moron can piss on the floor. Impress me. Shit on the ceiling.”

Just some food for thought.