FRIDAY FIVE
This week's Friday five is devoted to shoes. Finally, a Friday five I can get behind ;^)

1. What size shoe do you wear? I usually wear a 7.5, for some shoes I wear an 8. This in an European 38, and a Japanese 24.

2. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Less than 20 (barely), which considering I have a bit of a fetish lately, isn't too bad.

3. What type of shoe do you prefer (boots, sneakers, pumps, etc.)? Judging by my shoe collection, I'm a fan of slides (open-toed or mules).

4. Describe your favorite pair of shoes. Why are they your favorite? I recently acquired a lovely pair of black mules with little flowers stitched into the top and little pointy one inch heels. They're so cool. The first day I wore them this salesguy at Banana Republic was fawning all over them, pointing them out to other salesfolk and such, and he told me "you must be sick to wear those in public".

5. What's the most you've spent on one pair of shoes? Honestly, the most I've spent on shoes is probably a little over a $100.00 several years ago on a pair of Birkenstock Boston's. I bought those shoes when I was a very poor undergraduate, and at the time that was an outrageous amount of money for me to spend on shoes, but they lasted forever and I plan on buying another pair soon. Generally though, I'm a bit of a cheapskate so I'm not likely to spend much more than $50 on a pair of trendy shoes.

The other day I wrote about how we can't even get data to test with. So yesterday I wrote a utility where you can spoof whatever data you want as if it were coming from the back end. It works just spiffy. I feel all proud of myself.

Bossman is impressed, I think. I was just happy to have some stimulating work to do.

ANY IDEAS
Mark and I want to buy a digital camera for our trip. Preferably something with lots of memory for pictures, that doesn't eat batteries, and is ideally pocket sized so as not to attract too much attention. Anybody know of something like that, or have a camera they really love?

Is anybody besides me really disturbed by "The Bachelor"? I caught about 10 minutes of this show last night and it really horrified me. How desperate are these women!? The whole idea is really wrong. The trend of lots of women vyiing for one "eligible" man (i.e. "Who wants to marry a millionaire") on television is a really disturbing notion to me. What is this teaching young girls watching these shows? What happened to all the momentum behind the women's rights movements of the Seventies, do people think we've achieved equality now? If anything it seems shows like this are giant leaps backwards in terms of women gaining equal status in this culture.

I was listening to 91.1 WREK on the way home Tuesday. This is the station that's been known to play hours of squeaking saxophones and the sound of plates breaking (I've always thought their motto should be "91.1. Hunh?"). Anyway, they said to call in if you wanted tickets to see Enon, so I called in and won, for the first time ever. So I went and saw them last night. I wasn't all that familiar with their stuff, but I took a friend who's a fan. They're an above average indie-rock band. It was good stuff, but they didn't go on until 12:45am. Yikes. I'm feeling it today.

In other music news, somehow Polyphonic Spree (that band I was raving about a while back) made it to number 17 in Blogdex, a site which ranks links by how many people in the blog community have included them. They must be catching on...

Gotta love working with the public.
I had my own version of work woes today. The first family I was scheduled to see claimed (incorrectly) the appointment was supposed to be at 2:00pm, I was there at 9:00am. Also, the mother didn't realize that I, and the speech therapist accompanying me, needed to see the child, she assummed that for the EVALUATION she just needed to fill out more paperwork. When we explained we did need to see the little one, she claimed she couldn't wake him up because he won't cooperate with her. Just to clarify, I am not the first contact people have with our agency. First there is an intake process where someone comes out to fully explain the program and the evaluation process to the family. Next, an evaluation appointment is scheduled, generally over the phone with the parent to make sure the appointment is scheduled at a time that's good for the family. Next, a letter goes out giving the family written confirmation of the appointment. Then finally, the day before the appointment, a service coordinator calls the family to remind them of the appointment. I'd like to point out that the first assessment was scheduled at the family's home, so all they had to do was be there, answer the door, and wake up the kid. Some days that's just too much effort for people. But I guess I shouldn't complain because I'm getting paid (thanks taxpayers).

I'm so glad I only contract for this company. On my desk sits a little commemorative lucite plaque/trophy that has the company logo and says "Extreme Effort" on it. They had a big box full of them, and handed them out the other day. There's a date on them too -- five months ago. No names or anything though. Color me motivated!

It's more than that. This is a long contract -- I've been here fifteen months now. We've been building a web site for a government agency. Our company insisted on using their COBOL back-end database, which is a 1960's technology. And the people responsible for maintaining this database are several steps removed from us. We're not allowed to talk directly to them. (The front end, BTW, is mainly Java servlets and JSPs.)

To top it off, now they are denying us the use of any data in the database we use for testing. So, we have to code functionality into the web pages we're building, then submit it to them and hope it works. It's rather like trying to paint a picture by reaching around from behind the canvas.

And when there are problems, they are reported to us using the company issue bug reporting software, which is mainframe-based, and was designed by dullards. For instance, to view the second page of a bug, you type slash-D-1, then hit the F11 key. (Why? My personal theory is that it's an inside joke.) If you want an idea how old this software is -- it prominently features the color cyan in its interface. Cyan is as sure a sign of obsolescence in software as Bakelite is in telephones.

Myself and the core group of developers here could have easily had this thing built in three months with a decent database we could actually access. Heck, we could've even handled that end of it ourselves. But if we did it that way, it would have only ended up faster and easier to maintain.

How can I complain though? As a contractor, I'm expected to just do the work and cash out. And fifteen months getting fat on the company teat is nothing to scoff at, especially with the job market the way it is right now. Still, it would be nice to contract like this for a company that isn't always reaching over its shoulder to scratch its backside.

I don't want to work today. The office is freezing, inspiring me to look into Websites for the Vietnamese mountains. I'm thinking maybe Christmas in Sapa would be nice. This place looks all right.
Mark and I are going to New York City probably next weekend. We saw a deal for the Alqonquin hotel. Now the real question is whether or not it's worth a couple hundred dollars to sleep where Dorothy Parker and pals used to get witty (and loaded) on a regular basis.

A couple of entries back I mentioned visiting Halong Bay as one of my lifetime goals. I had forgotten about that one, actually. But that did inspire me to go back and find my list of lifetime goals that I made up a little while back, so here it is. I've knocked a few off since I first made the list -- those are crossed out.

• Visit
  
  
  
  • Machu Pichu
    
  • Antarctica
    
  • Australia
    
  • New Zealand
    
  • Scandinavia
    
  • Rio
    
  • Greenland
    
  • Hawaii
    
  • Alaska
    
  • Madagascar
    
  • Taoudenni
    
  
  
• Hear song I wrote on radio.
  
• Publish a scientific discovery.
  
• Write a novel. Hmmmm.
  
• Live in
  
  
  
  • NYC
    
  • San Francisco
    
  • London
    
  
  
• Become intimately familiar with a complete classical symphony.
  
• See in concert:
  
  
  
  • Tom Waits
    
  • Pete Townshend
    
  • Rolling Stones
    
  
  
• Dive with a whale shark.
  
• See a shark while diving/snorkeling.
  
• Do a dive in a shark cage.
  
• Swim with dolphins.
  
• See a live volcano.
  
• Be in an earthquake.
  
• See the northern lights.
  
• Ride on a motorcycle.
  
• Balloon over Serengeti.
  
• See NHL hockey game from front row.
  
• Parasail.
  
• Ride race car on track with high banked walls.
  

Hmmm, that last one I might have to attempt while I'm still living in the proximity of someplace like the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

I cleaned up on the football pool this week. For three of the games, I was the only person -- out of nine -- who picked the right team (San Diego, Kansas City, and Baltimore).

This is the sort of gripping news that will earn this blog a devoted fan base. I can just feel it.

I caught the movie Signs last night. Spoilers follow, so stop reading if you still plan on seeing it.

It held my attention, but it bothered me for a few reasons. One, the joylessness of the household where it was set made me not care about the characters so much. And two, it wasn't really science fiction. The aliens were just a plot device in fair-to-middling human interest story. I want grand scale on my alien invasions.

I remember seeing Indochine in the theaters back when it came out, and vowing I would someday go to the bay where the boat scenes were filmed. I always thought it was in Thailand, but it turns out it was Halong Bay in Vietnam, which Marjorie just mentioned. I love it when a plan comes together.

I hate Mondays. I know that's a horrible cliché, but I always stay up too late Sunday night for no good reason, not wanting to give up the weekend. And I'm just full of resentment when the alarm goes off in the morning.

TIGER TIGER BURNING BRIGHT
Mark neglected to mention that the tiger was playing with a big ball romping around in the water, and occasionally he took a little break to come and spray the window with his, um, urine. It was as if he spied someone he particularly liked every once and awhile and decided, okay you're mine now, I've marked you. Whatever he was thinking, it was definitely amusing.
By the way we've offficially decided to go the S.E. Asia job or no job. We've set a go date for the end of November/beginning of December. Pretty exciting stuff. I'm sure they'll be many future posts on the subject. I'm personally really looking forward to visiting Vietnam. Halong Bay in the north seems particularly amazing.

Things I did this past week that I haven't done in a long time:

I went to the library. I even got a library card. I haven't had one in twenty years or so.

I took a nap. It was nice. I hadn't taken one in a year at least.

I got pooped on by a bird. Twenty years at least on that one too.

Today we did something we do do pretty often, which is go to the zoo (no offense, Mike ;-). They had several new exhibits, including bats, a king vulture, and a Komodo dragon. Plus, we got to see one of the tigers romping in the water from just on the other side of the glass. A magnificent beast.